Thread 2938691

what makes a steam pump continuously move? I don't get why it wouldn't just equilibrate and freeze still. I understand steam pushes things but why does it act against itself and move against a position of equilibrium and just block the steam? I'm a fucking idiot and have spent months thinking about this and I'm still not grasping it. Nothing is spinning, that would make it make sense. How the hell does a non-rotating mechanical component continue to operate like this? Is there a concept I can read up on? Most internet searches just lead to 'steam does it'

>steam pump move
some steam pumps have no moving parts.
regardless
In a reciprocating piston steam engine usually a slide valve is connected at the crank, it works out of sync with the piston, so there can not be an equilibrium
but why do you outsource literally doing a web search or reading wiki or even thinking to 4ch? are you AI brained?

>>2938691 (OP)
the sliding valves act in time with the cylinders but slightly ahead

>>2938697
also steam is expansive so it continues to do work after the cutoff

>>2938706
good point we should just add the notion of a flywheel

>>2938710
>flywheel
butwhy.jpg

>>2938714
because flywheels can specifically help with what OP is all about

>>2938691 (OP)
This is missing something. Your steam is pumping a fluid? Then sure, you get pulses. But if that fluid is powering something else, spinning a shaft or whatever, it will even out.

Also remember that a gas will cool as it expands. So if you have high heat/pressure steam pushing against one side of that piston, it loses it’s pushing power toward the end of the stroke, and the steam coming on the other side of the piston can easily push it back. And there must be some exhaust valve or something more not really shown in the simplified .gif.

My 1.2 semesters of ME armchair engineering

Also what anon said about a flywheel with so many piston engines. Flywheels smooth lots of things out, especially anything with a reciprocating piston. And stuff has been fine tuned over decades and decades.

>>2938691 (OP)
i don't really understand what part is confusing.
do you understand that areas of high pressure move to areas of low pressure and result in equal pressures? you understand that if you blow up a balloon it expands because the high pressure inside pushes against the low pressure outside? you understand that if you burst the balloon the high pressure air inside then moves out into the low pressure air outside and doesn't just stay in a big ball of high pressure air?
second concept is that liquid is 1000 times more dense than gas. so if you boil a liquid, say water into steam, its going to want to occupy about 1000 times the volume. if you constrain it to less than that volume then it will be at higher pressure.

ok so in a steam piston the steam coming in from the boiler is at high pressure because its boiled water and constrained by the piston. it 'wants' to get out into the low pressure air outside.
the piston has two surfaces, one is connected to the high pressure steam from the boiler, one is connected to low pressure outside.
the high pressure from the boiler pushes the piston in one direction against the low pressure and pushes the steam out. the movement of the piston pushes a valve set which reverses the connections, the low pressure side becomes the high pressure side and vice versa. the cycle repeats.
thats the steam part. the pumping part is essentially the same in reverse, the piston moves the fluid because the pressures in the pumping body are lower than that of the engine body. the pressure required to move the pump side piston is related to head, the height of the movement of the fluid. (also both sides are governed by pressure = force / area )

what part of the cycle exactly, and why, do you believe equilibrium is achieved?

>>2938691 (OP)
>HURR DURRR

>>2938999
This right here is why this board sucks massive nc.

>>2938706
>>2938725
>>2938750
> lots of smart terms but did not answer OPs question

>>2938710
Close

>>2938691 (OP)
> why it wouldn't just equilibrate and freeze still
Inertia of the parts. Once the engine runs the valve doesn’t get stuck in the middle because the piston has a mass and a speed when it crosses. A flywheel can make it smoother but isnt needed if the mass of the components is enough to beat the ‘back force’ under normal loads. The pump won’t start on its own from the middle position and you figured correctly that when you put too much load on it the speed gets too low and it will stall right there.

>>2938691 (OP)
>what makes a steam pump continuously move?
same principle as magnets.
>I don't get why it wouldn't just equilibrate and freeze still.
because water vapor has entropy and this is very variable, so basicaly, you think you are using vapor, but in reality you are using the same principle of nuclear reactor, but instead using fancy elements, you are using water, heated water molecules they behave at some critical "point" like nuclear reactor molécules. but instead of enriching uranium with complex methods and crazy energy amount, using steam water, you can somewhat easily enrich water with energy directly, so that water molecules behave like crazy when they absorb energy, almost behaving like enriched pluton.
>I'm a fucking idiot and have spent months thinking about this and I'm still not grasping it.
i feel the same way, when i look at gyroscope trying to portrait a inertial motor technology(but i sucks at physics more than chemistry, so yes, i am also a retarded at some physics stuff).i perfectly get what you feel.
>How the hell does a non-rotating mechanical component continue to operate like this?
the best guess i can give, is that the "spiral" or "vortex" concept, is a spiral of satan, or spiral from chronos, or spiral rule, that is a standard at our world reality, or our world cube prison, for some reason, tesla used this "trick" as getting everything on the "spiral" context and managed to create a lot of interesting stuff, like the water valvule that use the vortex of water direction as way to prevent water from going forward, without any mechanical moving parts.
>Nothing is spinning,
i saw spinning but not in the way you see, it´s spinning but not in the axis you are thinking of.
>How the hell does a non-rotating mechanical component continue to operate like this?
look for tesla water valve, the omnidirectional one.
they removed useful content from internet so that you need to pay for it in "universities".

>>2938691 (OP)
>what makes a steam pump continuously move?
Exhausting to atmosphere through that black circle that represents the exhaust port on the valve. And the valve on the right side is the pump that pushes the fresh water through the boiler so it can be boiled into steam. To again supply the power stroke on the valve system on the left. Not pictured are the gear reductions and the governor that prevent the system from running at too high of a speed, which would put everything out of the range of timing that provides efficient power delivery.

Gasoline engines have their own valve trains too and they have to control the timing of the intake, compression, and exhaust. They're not any different in operating principle since both take advantage of gas and thermal expansion to produce mechanical force.

>>2938691 (OP)
if only there was some type of website where videos are stored, and you could find just about anything on. but alas....