Would someone kindly explain the difference between torque and horsepower?

Question

In layman's terms, please . . . my background is NOT in engineering!

Answer 1

Torque is a force, which means, that it measures how hard something is pulling or pushing more or less.

Horsepower is a measure of power. that means it is a measure of how much energy is being put into the engine over a given time.

That's why high horsepower gives good acceleration. more energy is fed faster. and things with high torque are good at pulling. they apply more force which i forgot to mention is what gives them better out of the hole acceleration

Answer 2

Torque is the amount of twisting force. For example if you twist off the top of a jar, you are applying a torque.

The difference between torque and power is that any force without moving through a distance does no work. So if you take a bolt sticking out horizontally from a wall and hang a wrench on it with a heavy weight, and the weight is not enough to turn it, you are applying a torque, but without any work (energy). When you have something like an engine, the torque is again the force turning the shaft, but since it is turning you are using energy (work). Horsepower is a unit of power, which is energy divided by the period of time the energy is expended. So horsepower would be torque x number of revolutions/second.

Answer 3

In quasi-laymen's terms...
Torque is the moment of a force...If you pull on a wrench to turn a bolt and nothing moves, you are exerting torque. If you pull on the wrench and are strong enough to spin it around you are still exerting torque to do it, but you are also putting out power (hp, watts or whatever) because of the rotational motion of the bolt which can be expressed in horsepower, watts, or several other units of power.

Technically, Torque=force X distance (i.e., length of wrench)
For example, pulling on a wrench with a force of 10 pounds using a 12 inch ( 1 foot) wrench will exert a torque of 10 X 1 = 10
foot-pounds. Spinning the bolt with this torque of 10 foot pounds at a speed of 100 rpm will require...
HP=2 X Pi X 100 X 10/ (33000) = 0.19 horsepower

Answer 4

Yes, torque is a twisting force. Consider a torque wrench that mechanics use. (If you don't know what this is, look it up, it will help you a lot.)

You can apply 1 pound of force at the end of a 1 foot long wrench. That is 1 ft-lb of torque. But, if you apply 1 pound of force at the end of a 2 foot long wrench, that is 2 ft-lbs.

Power = torque x rotational speed where rotational speed is expressed as 2 x pi x rev/second.

OK, there ya go!

The next part is how automotive engines work, which is what I think you were after. Torque and HP vary with RPM. Torque starts at zero at zero RPM, peaks at 3 or 4 kRPM and declines by maybe 50% at 5.5 to 6.5 kRPM.

The horsepower curve looks similar except it is pushed toward higher RPMs. The HP peak should occur slightly below the redline at 5 to 6 kRPM. Best efficiency is usually near the torque peak.

Answer 5

Torque is the measurement of a twisting force. Measured in units uch as foot pounds. If you were to take a lever, say a wrench, and and apply a force to it to cause rotation, the amount of torque that you applied would be the force multiplied by the length of the lever. In a car engine, the force is supplied by the burning fuel pushing on a piston which then pushes on the crank causing the crankshaft to rotate. Power is a measure of the torque multiplied by the rotational speed. So we can get a large slow motor with a high torque but not much in the way of power but a smaller motor with lower torque that can produce higher power output.

Answer 6

TORQUE
In physics, torque can be thought of informally as "rotational force". The SI units for Torque are newton meters although centinewton meters (cN·m), foot-pounds force (ft·lbf), inch pounds (lbf·in) and inch ounces (ozf·in) are also frequently used expressions of torque. The symbol for torque is τ, the Greek letter tau. The concept of torque, also called moment or couple, originated with the work of Archimedes on levers. The rotational analogues of force, mass, and acceleration are torque, moment of inertia, and angular acceleration respectively. The force applied to a lever, multiplied by its distance from the lever's fulcrum, is the torque. For example, a force of three newtons applied two metres from the fulcrum exerts the same torque as one newton applied six metres from the fulcrum. This assumes the force is in a direction at right angles to the straight lever. More generally, one may define torque as the cross product:


where F is the force vector and r is the vector from the axis of rotation to the point on which the force is acting.

HORSEPOWER
The horsepower (hp) is the name of several non-metric units of power. In scientific discourse the term "horsepower" is rarely used due to the various definitions and the existence of an SI unit for power, the watt (W). However, the idea of horsepower persists as a legacy term in many languages, particularly in the automotive industry for listing the maximum rate of power application of internal-combustion engines.

There are two important factors to consider when evaluating a "horsepower" figure:

Various definitions for the unit itself
Various standards for measuring the value
These factors can be combined in unexpected ways — the true power output for an engine rated at "100 horsepower" might vary significantly from a reader's expectations. For this reason, various groups have attempted to standardize both the definition and measurement system, often leading to even more confusion. Although the SI watt is not subject to varying definitions, it can still vary based on the measurement conditions.

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Answer 7

In layman's terms:
Torque is a rotational force
Horsepower is amount of energy you get from the engine.

For same horsepower:
small shaft + large torque = snap the shaft
large shaft + large torque = shaft is able to handle the energy
if shaft is too big you are wasting energy and hp decreases.

Answer 8

Low end power vs high end power.

Think about it this way: you've got a load of bricks on a cart to move. You need really strong power to get that load moving, because thanks to inertia, those bricks are gonna stay put until acted upon. So you hook up a team of horses and crack your whip. The horses pull and strain, and the load moves. That's your torque.
Now you have to get the bricks to the destination as quickly as possible. if you've got more than one horse in the team, that lessens the burden for each individual horse, so the more horses you have, the more efficiently you can get there because even though the distance is the same, the individual load on each horse is less. That's horsepower. literally.

Answer 9

torque is the revolution that the medium makes and horsepower is the amount of energy produces by the torque OK.

Answer 10

torque is the initial amount of power exerted by the crankshaft. horsepower is the final number for power resulting from the crankshaft. with all the gears and such, the inital power (torque) is lessened by the time it reaches the wheels.