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Introduction
The Newcomen Steam Engine was only used to pump water out of mines at that time. In 1769,
James Watt improved the function of the steam engine and made it practical in the real world [1],
which is why most people still think Watt invented the steam engine.
James Watt‟s steam engine is designed so that water goes into a high temperature boiler, is
boiled and vaporized, and turns into high pressure steam. This steam pushes the piston, generat-
ing a forward and backward motion (see http://static.howstuffworks.com/flash/steam-engine.swf
for an animated picture) [3]. Because the combustion room is located outside the engine, the
steam engine is also called the external combustion engine.
According to the physics rule of motion, when an object is in static status it needs a larger force
to overcome friction. When the object starts moving, the needed driving force becomes smaller
and smaller, and the speed becomes faster and faster. Therefore, to move the piston in a steam
engine from static position, very high pressure must be generated to push the piston. When the
piston starts moving, the pressure decreases, because it is released from the exhaust by the
movement of the piston, before it can be compressed into high pressure air. At low speed, the
engine creates high pressure steam to push the piston, while at high speed, the steam pressure
becomes low. That‟s why the old steam powered locomotives start very slowly, but still can
reach a very high speed.
The steam engine is very efficient at generating power based on the physics rule of motion; how-
ever, it takes awhile before the machine can reach its highest efficiency. Another drawback is
that the steam engine occupies too much space. Therefore, scientists tried to develop an engine
with smaller size, but that can instantly generate the power needed. The internal combustion en-
gine, which has been used for most machinery including vehicles, was invented. Several kinds of
internal combustion engines have been widely used for vehicles, for example, in the two-stroke
combustion cycle, four-stroke combustion cycle, and rotary engines. The first engine to use a
four-stroke combustion cycle successfully was built in 1867 by N. A. Otto [9]. The design of the
internal combustion engine is much more complicated than the steam engine, however. All inter-
nal combustion engines need to go through the following procedures to finish the combustion
cycle: intake, compression, combustion, and exhaust. The shock wave file
http://static.howstuffworks.com/flash/engine.swf [11] shows how the four-stroke internal com-
bustion engine works. First, gasoline comes from „C‟ and moves the piston downward. Second,
the piston moves upward and compresses the air. Third, the compressed air is fired and moves
the piston downward again. Finally, the fired air is exhausted through „L‟ and moves the piston
upward again. While fired once every two cycles for a four-stroke cycle internal combustion en-
gine, a two-stroke combustion cycle internal engine is fired once per cycle, which can be seen on
the shock wave file http://static.howstuffworks.com/flash/two-stroke.swf [10]. The internal com-
bustion design can instantly convert the power generated by the explosion of burning fuel into
high pressure air to push the piston. Unlike the steam engine, for an internal combustion engine
to move the piston faster and faster, more and more fuel is needed to generate higher pressure. In
other words, for an internal combustion engine, high pressure is needed to keep the piston run-
ning at a high speed, while at low speed, only low pressure is necessary. This is just opposite to
the function of the steam engine.
Even though it solves the dimension and slow start issues of the steam engine, the internal com-
bustion engine generates another serious problem. When the piston is running at high speed, the
pressure needed is also high, which violates the physics rule of motion. Running an engine at
high speed with high pressure is not efficient, and also decreases the engine life. To solve this
problem, the transmission system was invented.
To transfer engine power efficiently, the gear ratio between the engine and wheels plays a very
important role. When we use a screwdriver, the portion we hold has a larger diameter, while the
portion contacting with the screw has smaller diameter. This design makes users use less force to
unscrew a screw while applying force on a larger diameter portion of the screw driver. There-
fore, attaching a smaller gear to the engine side and connecting it to a larger gear to deliver
power to wheels helps overcome friction when moving a static vehicle. Figure 2 shows that the
large gear of the wheels needs less force to drive it. However, it also shows that when the engine
gear turns one circle, the wheel gear only turns about one half. The car won‟t run as fast as pos-
sible.
Figure 2
Consider the following situation from Figure 3: the wheel gear has a smaller size, which needs
more force to move it while the car is static. It won‟t even be possible to move the car if the en-
gine power is not large enough. However, when the engine gear turns 1 cycle, the wheel gear
may turn 2, which makes the car run faster.
Figure 3
Based on the physics rule of motion, after the object starts moving, the driving force needed be-
comes smaller. Therefore, if the car can run on the large gear condition (Figure 2) when starting,
but change to a small gear (Figure 3) when moving, that is, applying a large force when starting,
but a small force when moving, this will makes the power transmission much more efficient.
The most common transmission systems that have been used for the automotive industry are
manual transmission, automatic transmission, semi-automatic transmission, and continuously-
variable transmission (CVT).
An automatic transmission uses a fluid-coupling torque converter to replace the clutch to avoid
engaging/disengaging clutch during gear change. A completed gear set, called planetary gears, is
used to perform gear ratio change instead of selecting gear manually. With the invention of the
automatic transmission, a driver no longer needs to worry about gear selection during driving. It
makes driving a car much easier, especially for a disabled or new driver. However, the indirect
gear contact of the torque converter causes power loss during power transmission, and the com-
plicated planetary gear structure makes the transmission heavy and easily broken.
A semi-automatic transmission tries to combine the advantages of the manual and automatic
transmission systems, but avoid their disadvantages. However, the complicated design of the
semi-automatic transmission is still under development, and the price is not cheap. It is only used
for some luxury or sports cars currently.
CVT has been used for low-powered machinery like scooters for a long time due to its highly
efficient gear change. However, it is a challenge to install it on high power machinery because of
the strength of the driving belt. With the progress of materials technology, engineers have been
successfully installed it on automobiles, making the power transmission efficient.
Manual Transmission
Most modern manual transmission cars have been equipped with synchronizers so double
clutching is no longer necessary. However, you still can use this technique when driving to en-
hance the synchronizers and clutch pad‟s lives.
Automatic Transmission
fugally. By locking one of them, the planetary set can generate three different gear ratios, in-
cluding one reverse gear, without engaging and disengaging the gear set. The shockwave file
http://static.howstuffworks.com/flash/automatic-transmission-planetary.swf shows how this
mechanism works when you click on the left buttons. Normally an automatic transmission sys-
tem has two planetary gear sets with different sizes of sun gears with their planet gears inter-
meshed (see Figure 11.) Only one planet carrier is used to connect both sets of planet gears. This
is called a compound planetary gear set. This design can generate four different gear ratios and
one reverse gear. The inputs, outputs, and gear ratios are summarized in Table 1 [7].
Over Drive or 4th Planet Carrier 72-tooth Ring 36-tooth Sun 0.67:1
Table 1
In order to lock the gears to perform gear ratio change, a band and clutches are used. The band is
connected to an actuator piston by way of a lever link (see Figure 12). The piston pushes the
lever link to force the band to lock the gear.
whose gear ratio is small than 1. This will make the gear shift more smooth [8].
Figure 17 Hydraulic System with Maze Structure. Image is from Charles Ofria, “A Short Course on Automatic
Transmission,” The Family Car Web Magazine, http://www.familycar.com/
Unlike a manual transmission system, automatic transmission doesn‟t use a clutch to disconnect
power from the engine temporarily when shifting gears. Instead, a device called a torque con-
verter was invented to prevent power from being tem-
porarily disconnected from the engine and also to pre-
vent the vehicle from stalling when the transmission is
in gear. Consider two fans facing each other: when
one of them is turned on and starts spinning, the other
one will also start spinning at a lower speed (see Fig-
ure 18). That‟s because the first fan moves the air to
drive the second fan to spin. This is the same idea as
the torque converter of an automatic transmission
system, except that it uses fluid instead of air as the
Figure 18 Image is from Charles Ofria, “A Short transportation media.
Course on Automatic Transmission,” The Family
Car Web Magazine, http://www.familycar.com/
A torque converter consists of four parts, a pump (im-
peller), turbine, stator, and transmission fluid. The
pump is connected to the engine and transfers engine power to the transmission fluid. The fluid
causes the turbine, which is connected to the input shaft, to spin. The stator is used to redirect
fluid returning from the turbine before it hits the pump, again to increase the efficiency. In this
design, even when the vehicle is in gear but not moving (the turbine is forced to stop), the pump
can still keep spinning without causing the engine to stall.
Figure 20 Tiptronic transmission. Image is from “Test Drive: 2002 Audi A4 1.8T,” Canadian Driver,
http://www.canadiandriver.com/articles/pw/02a4cvt.htm
Another popular CVT is Nissan Extroid toroidal CVT. It uses two discs instead of pulleys and
two rollers (wheels) instead of a belt, compared with a pulley based CVT. Figure 22 shows that
the two rollers spin around the horizontal axis, and also tilt in or out around the vertical axis.
When the two rollers tilt to the upper disc in Figure 22, they touch the upper disc with a larger
Semi-automatic Transmission
A semi-automatic transmission is a very advanced system, which still uses a clutch to perform
the gear shift instead of a torque converter. Unlike the manual transmission, the computer does
all of the clutch disengaging, gear shifting, and clutch engaging. This not only makes the gear
shifting faster than manual transmission, but also prevents the vehicle from stalling when the car
is stationary. Like a tiptronic transmission, a semi-automatic transmission can also be switched
to manual mode to perform gear shifting at the drivers‟ wish. The two most common semi-auto-
matic transmissions are direct shift transmission (aka dual-clutch transmission) and electrohy-
draulic manual transmission (aka sequential transmission).
critical issue which determines the CVT‟s performance. The infinite number of gear ratios makes
gear change smooth, and the result is better fuel efficiency. However, some drivers who enjoy
quick acceleration may not like the CVT‟s slow and smooth acceleration.
Two different semi-automatic transmission systems are the most advanced transmission systems
used in race cars and luxury cars. They use computers to perform gear shift faster than conven-
tional manual transmission, and also with better fuel economy. However, the direct shift trans-
mission has too many machine parts, and also a complex clutch set, which makes the gear box
heavy, and easily broken. The high repair cost is also an issue. The electrohydraulic manual
transmission has a simpler gear structure with a rotating drum to perform gear ratio change. The
drum can be rotated manually, or by computer control. This makes the gear shift extremely fast,
and due to its simple structure, the gear box is not heavy, and only occupies a small space. That
is why it‟s also used for manual transmission on motorcycles. However, if you need to make a
sudden stop at high speed, it‟s impossible to shift from 6th gear directly to 1st gear. You will
need to go through all gears from 5th to 2nd. Without a clutch design, the gear shift is not
smooth. That‟s why it is only used for some high speed race cars like Toyota MR2 and Ferrari,
which only consider speed but not comfort.
It is likely that, with the progress of new material technology, the CVT will gradually replace the
conventional automatic transmission due to its high fuel efficiency and smooth gear shift. The
technology of semi-automatic transmission systems will also be improved to perform smooth
gear shift and extend the cars‟ lifetime, without losing fast acceleration and fuel efficiency. The
torque converter with fluid coupling may be improved, or may no longer be used for cars in the
future due to its low-efficiency power transfer. The gear shift of the manual transmission will be
controlled by computer instead of engaging/disengaging the clutch and moving the gear selector
by hand. For some modern cars, using push-buttons behind the steering wheel, instead of a con-
ventional shift lever or stick, also saves gear shift time when shifting manually. An adaptive
transmission control (ATC) has also been invented by using a computer to recognize and memo-
rize different drivers‟ styles, and determining the best shifting timing for different drivers. As
mentioned in the Introduction, a transmission system is needed for a vehicle due to the internal
combustion engine‟s property of running at high pressure at high speed but low pressure at low
speed. If someday an engine with different properties is invented, the transmission system may
no longer be necessary, but can still get the vehicle to reach its maximum speed in a couple of
seconds.
References
8. Charles Ofria, “A Short Course on Automatic Transmission,” The Family Car Web.
Magazine, http://www.familycar.com/