Principles
The aforementioned reciprocating balance on the wheels attempts to prevent the worst of the reciprocating forces at play on a locomotive, though as a compromise, this extra mass on the wheel causes it to be out of balance vertically, therefore creating hammer blow. Therefore, if reciprocating balancing is increased, it may appear that a locomotive is running smoothly, but at a high cost in hammer blow, especially at high speeds.
Locomotives are balanced to their individual cases, especially if several of the same design are constructed (a class). The normal operating speed is ascertained, resulting in each class member being balanced accordingly. Usually the reciprocating weight is balanced between 45 to 50% of total balance weight. High speed locomotives were the key recipients of such treatment due to the increased level of forces involved, and the exponential factor of stress on the track at these higher speeds.
Read more about this topic: Hammer Blow
Famous quotes containing the word principles:
“The machines that are first invented to perform any particular movement are always the most complex, and succeeding artists generally discover that, with fewer wheels, with fewer principles of motion, than had originally been employed, the same effects may be more easily produced. The first systems, in the same manner, are always the most complex.”
—Adam Smith (1723–1790)
“The mode of founding a college is, commonly, to get up a subscription of dollars and cents, and then, following blindly the principles of a division of labor to its extreme,—a principle which should never be followed but with circumspection,—to call in a contractor who makes this a subject of speculation,... and for these oversights successive generations have to pay.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“That, upon the whole, we may conclude that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)