How do steam engines?
The eighteenth century industrial revolution would not have been possible without the power of steam engines , with its external combustion engine, became the first widely used. Its vital industry implementation resulted in major advances in all areas, especially in economic, social and technological. For all these reasons today scientific eye, I invite you to know, among other things, the development and operation of the steam engine, one of the greatest inventions in history.
What is a steam engine?
It is called the steam engine to machines with external combustion engines, working to convert thermal energy (heat power) of boiling water into mechanical energy type. The heat resulting from the burning coal of certain amounts of water is boiled becomes steam. That steam is captured and managed to feed a number of elements that make up the machine.
Who invented the steam engine?
Thomas Newcomen invented the steam engine in 1705. With the help of some colleagues as the physicist Robert Hooke and mechanic John Calley, Newcomen was the first to machine steam itself. Some years later was used as the basis for several of the most important inventions of the Industrial Revolution as the locomotive, steamboats and factories, among other things. Several years later, James Watt (the bulbs), we made significant improvements, until in 1769 finished perfecting it.
How does a steam engine?
Steam engines work by powered steam engine, the same that have fed on locomotives and other machinery between 1800 and 1950. Although there are different sizes and shapes, basically they all work very similarly. Boiled in a cauldron certain amount of water constantly, after heated by a fire fed by different fuels such as wood, coal or oil, it boils. When boiled in the boiler, the steam generated is concentrated generating high pressure and in that state it is directed to a closed chamber known as the steam chamber.
Steam from the boiler entering the chamber, where at the front end is a cylinder, which by expanding the volume of water, pushes a piston. Through a connecting rod-crank mechanism of the circular movement of this piston is converted into a translational movement or rotation.
This movement is capable of rotating wheels for example of a locomotive or even cause the rotation of a rotor in an electric generator. When the cycle ends, the piston returns to where it started and all the steam comes out with inertia using the kinetic energy (the same that has so much to do with the operation of the roller coaster).