In automotive engineering, the master cylinder is a control device that converts non-hydraulic pressure (commonly from a driver's foot) into hydraulic pressure. This device controls slave cylinders located at the other end of the hydraulic system.
As piston(s) move along the bore of the master cylinder, this movement is transferred through the hydraulic fluid, to result in a movement of the slave cylinder(s). The hydraulic pressure created by moving a piston (inside the bore of the master cylinder) toward the slave cylinder(s) compresses the fluid evenly, but by varying the comparative surface-area of the master cylinder and/or each slave cylinder, one can vary the amount of force and displacement applied to each slave cylinder, relative to the amount of force and displacement applied to the master cylinder.
Read more about Master Cylinder: Vehicle Applications
Famous quotes containing the words master and/or cylinder:
“A penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then and so begins for us the cruelest trouble of all.”
—Honoré De Balzac (1799–1850)
“The outline of the city became frantic in its effort to explain something that defied meaning. Power seemed to have outgrown its servitude and to have asserted its freedom. The cylinder had exploded, and thrown great masses of stone and steam against the sky.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)