A car engine basically has thousands of mini explosions happening inside of it, is has parts moving very fast and generating tons of heat, and experiences extreme temperature fluctuations on a daily basis. Yet it is the part that usually dies last in a car.
How do they make them last so long and why are we unable to make other parts of the car as long lasting, such as tires and brakes?
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There are plenty of answers that address the question in the post title, but I wanted to address the use of the word “explosion”. It’s better to call what happens in an engine as a fast burn. The pistons are pushed down by the expanding flame front and not a shockwave. So the force of the burn, while definitely frontloaded, does get spread out for the duration of the stroke. This helps with the longevity of the moving components.
The line between a fast burn and an explosion is actually kinda vague so youre not really wrong to use the word, but when people think of an explosion, they tend to think of something like a bomb that causes damage by producing a shockwave, and that’s not what happens in an engine. Or at least, it’s not supposed to.
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