Conrod Length

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glue-itcom

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The length of the conrod has an impact on the smoothness of an engine, if we look at this equation that describes the position of the piston:

conneting-rod-equation.jpg

Plotting the velocity and the acceleration of the piston we get
conneting-rod-equation02.jpg

The solid line is for an engine with a stroke of 30mm and a conrod 50mm between centres, the dotted line is for the same stroke but a conrod of 100mm between centres.

The really interesting part is the acceleration and with the shorter conrod we see a squaring of the "sine wave" thus if we looked at the fourier transform of this we would see a lot more higher frequency components (Engine Design)

The issue with a longer conrod is the engine will be much taller or longer, plus the issues with a longer conrod buckling - it would though be interesting to look at the design of a perfect model engine, however, this would have to be application specific....
 
For extra mathematical enjoyment, calculate the lateral load on the piston as a function of conrod length.
 

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