To my understanding 1Nm is a force of a 100g pushing down on the 1m long rod. But new Ducati Panigale produces torque of 140Nm. Does it mean that 14kg pushing on 1m rod can stop the engine? It seems way to low.
In: 1
It’s one newton, which is *about* the weight of 100g on Earth.
But yes, that’s exactly what it means. A meter is a pretty long lever. The diameter of the vehicle’s wheels will be closer to half a meter, so a radius of 1/4 a meter. That means that 14 kilograms of ‘force’ on your meter lever is the same as 56 kilos on the wheels.
But that’s not all. The engine is not directly connected to the wheels. It has gearing, and these gears exchange movement speed for torque. This means that, with the right choice of gears, your wheels can have as much torque as you want, provided your engine spins fast enough to compensate. The quoted torque I could find for that vehicle was at 7,000-some RPM which is quite fast. A half-meter wheel at 70 km/hr will be spinning at around 800 rpm, which is way slower, so the engine can have a large gearing ratio applied to it even at that speed, multiplying its torque at the wheels quite a bit.
Latest Answers