Car cylinder-like contraption?

CrossboneSRB

All right, I had recently a surge of inspiration to create a very awesome contraption, however, one of the most crucial informations in order to start out the design of this contraption is this car cylinder-like mechanism that it uses, and I have no idea how car cylinders work, and by that I mean the technical aspects, such as how would I calculate how much force is exerted by each explosion of fuel? What information do I need in order to make proper calculations? How do I calculate the perfect mix of fuel, compression and air for this mechanism? How quickly would it burn fuel? By the way, the fuel I'm planning to use is either petrol or diesel due to the fact that it's easy to acquire and the material quite probably aluminium. There's so much to this idea that it's incredible! I really badly need some help!

mimethic

I think that the best way to understand the process within the engine you must find some simulation of any engine or just cylinder. There is many of them on web. I'll post some web adress in 2h, now need to go. If you cant find any simulation, check the projects of first engines. Like carbon engine...

examorph

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75sf3VUNF6A

That's a short video on the basic operations of the combustion chamber.
Doing things like calculating the force exerted on the chamber would not be too difficult to calculate if the real engine worked exactly like it does in the video animation, what I mean is that there is more that happens "behind the scenes" than just the "suck, squash, bang, blow" I mean things like:

Lag
Lead
Overlap

all occur, this bassicly means that the valves are never fully closed, lead meaning the inlet valve is open a tiny bit longer, lag being the exhaust valve being a little bit open while the combustion process is in action and overlap being where they are both open for a few milli- seconds in the middle of the operation, all this will effect the pressures in the combustion chamber and different manufacturers have different times for the lag, lead, overlap, of course this is just one example, there is more than just this which will effect the pressure.