Piston Force Calculator

How do you Calculate Piston Force?

Piston force is easy to calculate with just two variables:

• Bore diameter


• Cylinder pressure

• A = Area of the piston (in square meters)


• Pressure = Pressure applied to the piston (in pascals)

Understanding Your Results

When you use this tool your result will be a single number. This number will represent the amount of force that the generated by a piston. This can directly be correlated with the power that an engine or system is able to generate and output.

For your convenience, you can easily convert the result into another unit of measurement if desired by selecting our other options from the dropdown next to your result. The result will automatically be converted to that unit as well.

How to Use the Piston Force Tool

Our tool is designed to help you calculate piston force in a simple and easy fashion. The steps involved with using our tool include:

1. Enter the bore diameter of the cylinder. Specifically, this is the diameter of the inner opening of a cylinder.


2. Enter the cylinder pressure.


3. Hit calculate and get your result in less than a second!

Example Calculation

Let's say you are trying to find the force of a piston in your car. The bore diameter is 3.76 inches and the cylinder pressure is about 184 psi. We can enter these values in our tool. Putting 3.76 in the bore diameter field and 184 in the cylinder pressure field. We do not need to change the units as the correct ones for our situation are the default units.

We can now hit calculate and get a piston force of about 2,043.072 pounds-force. This can easily be converted into another unit like kilonewtons where the new answer would be 9.088.