Sunday, January 19, 2014
How to Calculate Engine Power in the Metric System
Nearly every car commercial boasts about the car engines horsepower. But for people outside the U.S., or with a scientific background but not a car background, it may be unclear how much power a horsepower truly is. One horsepower is defined as 33,000 lb*ft/min (pounds times feet divided by minutes). So, converting horsepower into the metric system is simply a matter of converting the separate units of force, distance and time to arrive at a value in Nm/s (Newtons times meters divided by seconds), also known as Watts.
Instructions
- 1
Convert pounds to Newtons using the conversion factor 4.448 N/lb. If we take the original figure of 33,000 lb*ft/min and multiply by 4.448 N/lb, we get 146,784 N*ft/min.
2Convert feet to meters using the conversion factor 0.3048 m/ft. If we multiply this by 146,784 N*ft/min (our figure from step 1), we get 44,740 N*m/min.
3Convert minutes to seconds using the obvious conversion factor 60 s/min. Because minutes is in the denominator of our figure, we must divide the figure by this conversion factor to get the minutes to cancel out. 44,740 N*m/min divided by 60 s/min yields 745.7 N*m/s, or 745.7 W.
4Calculate the metric power of an engine from its horsepower rating using this figure. Since we know that 1 horsepower = 745.7 W, we can simply multiply the horsepower of an engine by 745.7 to arrive at a value in Watts. For example, a 300 horsepower engine puts out 300 * 745.7 = 223,700 W, or 223.7 kW.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.