Booster Engine - Reasons For Booster Use

Reasons For Booster Use

The booster is intended to address fundamental flaws of the standard steam locomotive. First, most steam locomotives do not provide power to all wheels. The amount of force that can be applied to the rail depends on the weight on driven wheels and the factor of adhesion of the wheels against the track. Unpowered wheels effectively 'waste' weight which could be used for traction. Unpowered wheels are generally needed to provide stability at speed, but at low speed this is not necessary.

Second, the "gearing" of a steam locomotive is constant, since the pistons are linked directly to the wheels via rods and cranks. Since this is fixed, a compromise must be struck between ability to haul at low speed and the ability to run fast without inducing excessive piston speeds (which would cause failure) or the exhaustion of steam. This compromise means that the steam locomotive at low speeds is not able to use all the power the boiler is capable of producing; it simply cannot use steam that quickly, and there is a big gap between the amount of steam the boiler could produce and the amount that can be used. The booster enables that wasted potential to be put to use.

Read more about this topic:  Booster Engine

Famous quotes containing the words reasons for and/or reasons:

    One of the reasons for the failure of feminism to dislodge deeply held perceptions of male and female behaviour was its insistence that women were victims, and men powerful patriarchs, which made a travesty of ordinary people’s experience of the mutual interdependence of men and women.
    Rosalind Coward (b. 1953)

    The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or color, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever.
    Simone Weil (1909–1943)