I took college physics. I learned that power is unit work per unit time, which can be expressed as newton-meters per second. Torque is a cross-product quantifying rotational force accounting for a lever arm, which is expressed as newton-meters. I know that the distance in the measurement of torque is perpendicular to the direction of rotational motion whereas the distance in measuring power is parallel to the direction of motion, so these are not the same “meters” at all. But both of these involve a measure of force – more force means more power and it means more torque. However, when it comes to car engines, two engines can have the same horsepower but very different torque. Why do HP and torque not increase in lock-step? Is this just a matter of available gear ratios in the transmission? Or is there a way to build an engine deliberately to make torque vs. Deliberately to make horsepower independent of the transmission? Thanks!
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Torque * RPM is HP
I think this helps you understand that torque is really telling you how hard the pistons push, since if you break it down to one cycle, then the energy from the piston, times the distance is torque, so torque is a measure of how much force comes from one cycle in the engine.
When you add in RPM, then the pistons push that much per second, so that’s total power. So for a particular engine, you’d expect torque to be relativity flat over RPM, while HP goes up linearly with RPM. Obviously, due to a lot of reasons, it’s not quite true, but you can help understand what’s going on.
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