Thread: Giant Piston
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Unread 11-02-2014, 00:08
Dan_Karol Dan_Karol is offline
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Re: Giant Piston

Something to think about:

if you have a 2 inch bore and 20" long piston and want it to impart just as much energy when it is almost completely deployed as when it starts you need to maintain the 60psi inlet pressure the entire time. During the operation of a piston used to shoot the ball it can be assumed that there is going to be no effective contribution from the compressor, it just isn't fast enough to keep up.

so, the ideal gas law tells us:
P*V = nRT

For argument's sake we will ignore the change in temperature. This tells us the pressure times the volume must be equal to a constant, so:

P_1*V_1 = P_2*V_2

where:
P_1 is the pressure in the tank (120 PSI MAX)
V_1 is the total volume of all tanks
P_2 is the working pressure after actuation (60 PSI MAX)
V_2 is the volume of all air tanks + the volume of the cylinder

so, with your setup (using my assumed cylinder)
120 PSI * (574 ml *4) = ((Pi*(1in^2)*20n )+(574 ml *4) * P_2
P_2 = ((120 PSI) * (574 ml *4) )/ ((Pi*(1in^2)*20in ) +(574 ml *4) ) = 82.85PSI

so,
unless you are experiencing an airflow problem.

Using several smaller diameter cylinders in tandem would solve this problem because it would allow higher flow rates into the combined cylinder-system.


Good Luck,
Dan
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Last edited by Dan_Karol : 11-02-2014 at 00:09. Reason: missed the original cylinder size