Why do engines have torque and horsepower curves?

Question

I don’t understand how there could be a difference in power and torque if you are burning the max amount of fuel possible 100 percent of the time.

In: 0

Answer 1

More bangs per second means more power. But too many bangs and the bangs don’t have enough time to fully bang. 😀

Anyway that result ends up giving you a curve that ramps up till it hits a peak then starts falling.

You also have little peaks and bumps when things like intake and exhaust resonance line up nicely allowing air to flow in and exhaust out of the engine faster.

Then you also have a bit of nonlinearity because another limiting factor is how much air can flow into the engine. Amount of fuel is easy to increase but air has to fit through the intake and be pulled in by vacuum created by the pistons.