Combustion Lab: a browser-based engine simulator with real thermodynamic models

Combustion Lab is an educational, in-browser internal-combustion-engine simulator that resolves engine behavior by crank angle rather than just reporting steady-state numbers. Users configure an engine from scratch — inline, V, or boxer layouts; cylinder count, bore, stroke, and compression ratio; spark (Otto) or diesel combustion; naturally aspirated, turbocharged, or supercharged induction — then adjust operating conditions like RPM, throttle, spark advance, and valve timing to watch performance respond in real time.

What sets it apart from a toy calculator is the physics underneath. It stitches together established textbook correlations: Wiebe heat-release, Woschni heat transfer, Chen–Flynn friction, and Livengood–Wu knock prediction. Output includes a cylinder cross-section animation, dyno curves, pressure-volume and pressure-crank-angle plots, energy breakdowns, and live logging with log-log scaling — the kind of instrumentation normally found in desktop engine-modeling packages, delivered entirely client-side.

The author is candid about the limits: the tool is meant to show engineering-realistic trends, not to certify a design. That framing makes it most valuable as a teaching and intuition-building aid for students and enthusiasts exploring how design choices trade off, rather than as production simulation software. The page discloses neither its authorship, source-code license, nor implementation stack.