Hello everyone,
Today I came up with a formula to calculate the speed of a steam locomotive in miles per hour based only on the amount of audible exhaust beats per second accounting for driver diameter. I've attached the formula in variable notation below with an explanation.
What we're doing here is essnetially combining two formulas. The one in parenthesis (80e/4) is the calculate the driving wheel RPM based on exhaust beats per second. We then need to convert this to miles per hour, which we do by multiplying the RPM by the driving wheel diameter in inches. We then multiply this product by 60, then by pi, and divide the result by 63360.
To prove that it works, here's an example with numbers substituted in for the variables.
Hope some of you will find this useful!
Eli Santin
