The Steam Engine.
By Raoul Abelin Choumin N.
Mechanical Engineer / CAD-PLM Consultant
A Steam engine is a machine for converting the heat energy of pressurized steam into
mechanical energy, using steam as a medium, or working fluid. When water is converted into
steam it expands, its volume increasing about 1,600 times. The force produced by the
conversion is the basis of all steam engines.
1- Basic principles
Like the more familiar car engine, a steam engine has a piston that moves when pressure is
applied, and valves to control the intake and exhaust of the contents of the cylinder. On an
internal combustion engine, air and fuel are drawn in; they are exploded, and like a big Rhino
in the cannon barrel, push on the piston trying to escape. In a steam engine, the inlet valve
opens, and steam under pressure pushes on the piston, until you open the exhaust valve to let
it out.
While they both have a piston moving in a cylinder, valves, and a crankshaft, there are a lot of
detail differences. While steam engines can be quite simple, most have more parts than a
comparable internal combustion engine.
Most of the time, the piston rod is attached to the piston and links it to the crosshead, which is
a large casting sliding in crosshead guides, allowing it only to move in the same direction as
the piston travel. The crosshead also houses the gudgeon pin on which the small end of the
connecting rod pivots. In this way, the transverse forces are applied only to the crosshead and
its bearings, not to the piston itself.
The valve is usually hooked into a linkage attached to the cross-head, so that the motion of the
cross-head slides the valve as well.
The high-pressure steam for a steam engine is generated by a boiler. The boiler is a closed
vessel which applies heat to water to create steam. Boilers can be classified into the following
configurations: Fire-tube boiler and the Water-tube boiler.
Picture of a Fire-tube-Steam Boiler
Steam engines powered all early locomotives, steam boats and factories, and therefore acted
as the foundation of the Industrial Revolution. In this article, we'll learn exactly the important
steps in the development of the steam engine.
2- The History
The first steam device is the Aeolipile and was invented by a
mathematician and engineer named Hero of Alexandria (Heron) in
the 1st century. The Aeolipile was a hollow sphere mounted so that it
could turn on a pair of hollow tubes that provided steam to the sphere
from a cauldron. The steam escaped from the sphere from one or
more bent tubes projecting from its equator, causing the sphere to
revolve. The Aeolipile is the first known device to transform steam
into rotary motion. Like many other machines of the time that
demonstrated basic mechanical principles, it was simply regarded as
a curiosity or a toy and was not used for any practical purpose. Its
thermal efficiency was low.
Picture of the Aeolipile illustration
In the following centuries, the few engines known about were essentially experimental
devices used by inventors to demonstrate the properties of steam, such as the rudimentary
steam turbine device described by Taqi al-Din in 1551 and Giovanni Branca in 1629.
Thomas Savery (1650-1715).
In the early days, one common way of removing the water was to use a series of buckets on a
pulley system operated by horses. This was slow and expensive since the animals required
feeding, veterinary care, and housing. The use of steam to pump water was patented by
Thomas Savery, an English military engineer and inventor in
1698.
Thomas Savery had been working on solving the problem of
pumping water out of coal mines, his machine consisted of a
closed vessel filled with water into which steam under
pressure was introduced. This forced the water upwards and
out of the mine shaft. Then a cold water sprinkler was used to
condense the steam. This created a vacuum which sucked
more water out of the mine shaft through a bottom valve.
The atmospheric engine invented by Thomas Newcomen in 1712,
today referred to as a Newcomen steam engine (or simply Newcomen
engine), was the first practical device to harness the power of steam to
produce mechanical work. Newcomen engines were used throughout
Britain and Europe, principally to pump water out of mines, starting in
the early 18th century. James Watt's later engine was an improved
version. Although Watt is far more famous today, Newcomen rightly
deserves the first credit for the widespread introduction of steam
power.
The Watt steam engine (alternatively known as the Boulton and Watt steam engine) was the
first type of steam engine to make use of steam at a pressure just above atmospheric to drive
the piston helped by a partial vacuum. Improving on the design of the 1712 Newcomen
engine, the Watt steam engine, developed sporadically from 1763 to 1775, was the next great
step in the development of the steam engine.
Offering a dramatic increase in fuel efficiency,
the new design replaced Newcomen engines in
areas where coal was expensive, and then went
on to be used in the place of most natural power
sources such as wind and water.
It played a key role in the development of the
modern world. Built in England during the
Industrial Revolution.
It was one of the earliest rotative (wheel-turning)
steam engines to be built and is the oldest in existence. The engine is also one of the oldest in
the world to still work regularly under steam.
The information of the following websites has been used to write this article:
http://www.the-nerds.org/Steam-101.html
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blsteamengine.htm
http://www.egr.msu.edu/~lira/supp/steam/
http://science.howstuffworks.com/steam3.htm
The first and second pictures belong to me and the rest are from Wikimedia Commons
