Motor-car Principles: The Gasoline Automobile

9781465678799

213 pages

Library of Alexandria

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Overview

The action of a steam, gasoline, or hot-air engine depends on the principle that when air or other gas is heated it expands, and that if it is confined in a space that will not permit it to expand, in striving to do so it creates pressure against all parts of the chamber in which it is contained. The more a gas is heated, the more it will expand if it is free to do so, and if not free, the greater will be the pressure that it will exert in striving to expand. Pressure may thus be generated by heat, and following along similar lines, heat may be produced by pressure, for when the pressure of a gas is increased by compressing it, or forcing it to occupy a smaller space, the gas will become heated. The reverse is also true, that when a gas is cooled, its volume is reduced, which reduces the pressure that it exerts; similarly, reducing the pressure by permitting the gas to expand reduces its temperature. To state these principles in another form, to create pressure in a gas it must either be heated or compressed into a smaller space, and to reduce its pressure it must either be cooled or permitted to expand. The action of a locomotive, the most familiar type of steam engine, is no mystery, and the production of steam in the boiler, its passage to the cylinder, and the application of its steady pressure against first one side of the piston and then the other, resulting in the turning of the driving wheels, are well understood. Water being converted into steam in the boiler, pressure is created because of the tendency of the steam to expand, but the only place in which it may expand is the cylinder, where in so doing it moves the piston.