Background
High-powered multi-cylinder internal combustion engines may be necessary to satisfy driver demands for quick acceleration and/or heavy towing capacity, but during daily use they are generally operated at power settings of less than 25%. For example, at freeway speeds, less than 40 hp (30 kW) are required to overcome aerodynamic drag, rolling friction, and to operate accessories such as air conditioning.
However, when a gasoline internal combustion engine is operating under less than full load, the effective compression ratio is much less than the measured compression ratio. Under light load, the throttle is not fully open, and the cylinders receive less than a full charge of air on each intake stroke. The pressure and temperature generated at combustion are therefore less than full load, and the thermodynamic laws which apply to all heat engines dictate that the engine will then be operating at less than its maximum possible thermal efficiency.
Thus, a high-powered, large-displacement engine is highly inefficient and wasteful when being used for normal driving conditions. This is the motivation for cylinder deactivation, to effectively spread the work load of the engine over fewer active cylinders which then operate under higher individual loads and therefore at higher efficiency.
Read more about this topic: Active Fuel Management
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)