John, Good writeup from the
John, Good writeup from the web about torque:
Force, Work and Time
If you have a one pound weight bolted to the floor, and try to lift it with one pound of force (or 10, or 50 pounds), you will have applied force and exerted energy, but no work will have been done. If you unbolt the weight, and apply a force sufficient to lift the weight one foot, then one foot pound of work will have been done. If that event takes a minute to accomplish, then you will be doing work at the rate of one foot pound per minute. If it takes one second to accomplish the task, then work will be done at the rate of 60 foot pounds per minute, and so on.
In order to apply these measurements to automobiles and their performance (whether you're speaking of torque, horsepower, newton meters, watts, or any other terms), you need to address the three variables of force, work and time.
Awhile back, a gentleman by the name of Watt (the same gent who did all that neat stuff with steam engines) made some observations, and concluded that the average horse of the time could lift a 550 pound weight one foot in one second, thereby performing work at the rate of 550 foot pounds per second, or 33,000 foot pounds per minute, for an eight hour shift, more or less. He then published those observations, and stated that 33,000 foot pounds per minute of work was equivalent to the power of one horse, or, one horsepower.
Everybody else said OK.
For purposes of this discussion, we need to measure units of force from rotating objects such as crankshafts, so we'll use terms which define a *twisting* force, such as foot pounds of torque. A foot pound of torque is the twisting force necessary to support a one pound weight on a weightless horizontal bar, one foot from the fulcrum.
Now, it's important to understand that nobody on the planet ever actually measures horsepower from a running engine. What we actually measure (on a dynomometer) is torque, expressed in foot pounds (in the U.S.), and then we *calculate* actual horsepower by converting the twisting force of torque into the work units of horsepower.
Visualize that one pound weight we mentioned, one foot from the fulcrum on its weightless bar. If we rotate that weight for one full revolution against a one pound resistance, we have moved it a total of 6.2832 feet (Pi * a two foot circle), and, incidently, we have done 6.2832 foot pounds of work.
OK. Remember Watt? He said that 33,000 foot pounds of work per minute was equivalent to one horsepower. If we divide the 6.2832 foot pounds of work we've done per revolution of that weight into 33,000 foot pounds, we come up with the fact that one foot pound of torque at 5252 rpm is equal to 33,000 foot pounds per minute of work, and is the equivalent of one horsepower. If we only move that weight at the rate of 2626 rpm, it's the equivalent of 1/2 horsepower (16,500 foot pounds per minute), and so on. Therefore, the following formula applies for calculating horsepower from a torque measurement:
Horsepower = torque x rpm divided by 5252
This is not a debatable item. It's the way it's done. Period.
Now, your job is to match the max torque value to the rpm range you want use, for the type of driving you want the car to perform at. For the realworld, the "flattest" torque curve at the range of rpm and gears used, will be the fastest.
