Comparison of diesel engine and petrol engine via performance curve (Power,
Torque, and Speed)?
Diesel Engine:
An internal combustion engine in which heat produced by the compression of air in the
cylinder is used to ignite the fuel.
Petrol engine:
A petrol engine (known as a gasoline engine in American English) is an internal
combustion engine with spark-ignition, designed to run on petrol (gasoline) and similar
volatile fuels.
Three Factors to Diverge Diesel and Petrol Engines
You might have studied various physics laws to evaluate the performance of diesel and petrol
engine, but the major factors are yet to discover. We have listed the three aspects which
measure the performance of both engines.
1. Higher Horsepower in Petrol Engines
The faster an engine revolves the higher horsepower it acquires. To understand better, let’s take
an example of two donkeys. One is fat and the other is average. Both donkeys have to carry
three packets of 20kg weight, so what do you think who will do it quickly? The fat donkey can
carry all three packets but will have a slower speed. On the other hand, an average donkey will
be able to carry two packets and take it to the destination swiftly. The same is the matter with
a petrol engines. Petrol has the fastest moving property, which results in it to have higher
horsepower than the diesel engine.
2. Higher Torque of Diesel Engine
The higher density of diesel fuel is one of many factors for it to encompass higher torque than
a petrol engine. Besides, the ratio and pressure at compression end are some other reasons why
does diesel engine has higher torque. In addition, petrol engine burns quickly like within a
fraction of seconds. The key factors that indicate elevated torque include better compression
ratio, fuel density, firm burning, and pressure. Hence, the diesel engine has all of these features,
and the petrol engine is totally opposite to it. So that’s why the petrol engine has lower torque
in every possible way.
3. Faster Acceleration of Petrol Engine
As we already know that diesel, fuel is thicker than petrol and hence will need robust machinery
to run it. As a result, a diesel engine has heavy machinery parts than that of the petrol engine.
So it takes a lot of energy to counter a diesel engine. Petrol engine in contrary is lighter;
therefore will include lighter parts, which consequently is easier to rotate. That’s the reason
why petrol engine accelerates faster than the diesel engine. Petrol is finely refined that lead to
the quick burning. Besides, because of having a linear torque curve, the petrol engine increases
the torque as the speed is increased.
Engine Performance:
Engine performance is often characterized by the engine operating behavior in the speed–load
domain, for example, the behavior of emissions, fuel consumption, noise, mechanical and
thermal loading. Engine performance maps refer to the constant value contour plots of a given
performance parameter in the speed–torque domain. A good understanding of engine
performance maps is important to a system design engineer.
For an engine equipped with fixed-geometry hardware without flexible controls (e.g., fixed-
geometry turbine, mechanical camshaft, mechanical water pump), optimum system
performance is a large compromise between high-speed and low-speed operations, or between
high-load and low-load operations. The trade-off effect is especially prominent when the range
of the engine speed (or load) is wide. Mapping the operating characteristics of engine customer
applications (e.g., vehicle driving cycles, load cycles) to the engine speed–load map and
mapping the engine speed–load characteristics to the component characteristic map (e.g., a
compressor map) are two important design techniques for a system engineer in conducting
system integration. Owing to the paramount importance of engine speed–load characteristics,
typical examples of engine performance maps are illustrated and discussed in this section.
Petrol Engine performance curve:
Diesel Engine performance curve:
