Example: What power would be needed, and also horsepower, to raise the GE-90 turbofan engine into position to install it on a Boeing 777-300 airplane? The engine weighs 19,000 lb, and it must be lifted 4 ft in 2 minutes.

The hoist that will be used to raise this engine into position will need to be powered by an electric motor because the average person will not be able to generate 1.15 hp in their arms for the necessary 2 minutes.

Torque is a very interesting concept and occurrence, and it is definitely something that needs to be discussed in conjunction with work and power. Whereas work is described as force acting through a distance, torque is described as force acting along a distance. Torque is something that creates twisting and tries to make something rotate.

If we push on an object with a force of 10 lb and it moves 10 inches in a straight line, we have done 100 in-lb of work. By comparison, if we have a wrench 10 inches long that is on a bolt, and we push down on it with a force of 10 lb, a torque of 100 lb-in is applied to the bolt. If the bolt was already tight and did not move as we pushed down on the wrench, the torque of 100 lb-in would still exist. The formula for torque is:

Even though this formula looks the same as the other formula for calculating work, recognize that the distance value in this formula is not the linear distance an object moves, but rather the distance along which the force is applied.

Notice that with torque nothing had to move, because the force is being applied along a distance and not through a distance. Notice also that although the units of work and torque appear to be the same, they are not. The units of work were inch-pounds and the units of torque were pound-inches, and that is what differentiates the two.

Torque is very important when thinking about how engines work, both piston engines and gas turbine engines. Both types of engines create torque in advance of being able to create work or power. With a piston engine, a force in pounds pushes down on the top of the piston and tries to make it move. The piston is attached to the connecting rod, which is attached to the crankshaft at an offset. That offset would be like the length of the wrench discussed earlier, and the force acting along that length is what creates torque. [Figure 5-6]

For the cylinder in Figure 5-6, there is a force of 500 lb pushing down on the top of the piston. The connecting rod attaches to the crankshaft at an offset distance of 4 in. The product of the force and the offset distance is the torque, in this case 2,000 lb-in.

In a turbine engine, the turbine blades at the back of the engine extract energy from the high velocity exhaust gases. The energy extracted becomes a force in pounds pushing on the turbine blades, which happen to be a certain number of inches from the center of the shaft they are trying to make rotate. The number of inches from the turbine blades to the center of the shaft would be like the length of the wrench discussed earlier.

Mathematically, there is a relationship between the horsepower of an engine and the torque of an engine. The formula that shows this relationship is as follows:

Example: A Cessna 172R has a Lycoming IO-360 engine that creates 180 horsepower at 2,700 rpm. How many pound-feet of torque is the engine producing?

A machine is any device with which work may be accomplished. For example, machines can be used for any of the following purposes, or combinations of these 5 purposes:

There are only six simple machines. They are the lever, the pulley, the wheel and axle, the inclined plane, the screw, and the gear. Physicists, however, recognize only two basic principles in machines: the lever and the inclined plane. The pulley (block and tackle), the wheel and axle, and gears operate on the machine principle of the lever. The wedge and the screw use the principle of the inclined plane.