In a reciprocating piston engine, the connecting rod or conrod connects the piston to the crank or crankshaft. Together with the crank, they form a simple mechanism that converts linear motion into rotating motion.
Connecting rods may also convert rotating motion into linear motion. Historically, before the development of engines, they were first used in this way.
As a connecting rod is rigid, it may transmit either a push or a pull and so the rod may rotate the crank through both halves of a revolution, i.e. piston pushing and piston pulling. Earlier mechanisms, such as chains, could only pull. In a few two-stroke engines, the connecting rod is only required to push.
Today, connecting rods are best known through their use in internal combustion piston engines, such as car engines. These are of a distinctly different design from earlier forms of connecting rods, used in steam engines and steam locomotives.
Read more about Connecting Rod: History, Steam Engines, Internal Combustion Engines
Famous quotes containing the words connecting and/or rod:
“Mine was, as it were, the connecting link between wild and cultivated fields; as some states are civilized, and others half-civilized, and others savage or barbarous, so my field was, though not in a bad sense, a half-cultivated field. They were beans cheerfully returning to their wild and primitive state that I cultivated, and my hoe played the Ranz des Vaches for them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalms, 23:4.