Piston Speed Calculator

Calculate the approximate speed at which pistons move in an engine with this free tool.

Required Information

Stroke Length:

Revolutions:

Average Piston Speed:

How it works

How Do Pistons Work?

Create Date: October 2, 2024

Last Modified Date: November 15, 2024

Pistons are housed within metal tubes, or cylinders, in most combustion engines. Their main purpose is to be pressed inward to compress both air and a gas-form of the vehicle's fuel that is injected into the cylinder. The gas is compressed quickly, causing it to 'explode', which turns the gas into power, hence the name combustion engine.

How do you Calculate Piston Speed?

Piston speed can be calculated by utilizing two variables:

Stroke length

Revolutions

When you have these values you can now use this formula to find the speed of a piston:

An image showing the formula for calculating the speed of a piston in an engine.

Where:

SL = Stroke Length of the piston

RPS = Revolutions Per Second

Understanding Your Results

Your result will be a single numerical value which indicates the speed at which an engine piston is moving. By default it is displayed in feet per minute but can be easily converted into another unit with the use of the dropdown selector.

How to Use the Piston Speed Tool

You can easily calculate the speed at which a piston is moving with our tool in just a few steps. The steps include:

Enter the stroke length of the piston.

Enter the number of revolutions that the piston is making.

Ensure the units for each field is correctly aligned with the values you have before calculating.

Hit calculate and get the average piston speed instantly!

Example Calculation

Let's say that you want to find the piston speed for your car when you are driving. Your RPM gauge is showing that you are driving at 3,000 RPM and you already know the stroke length of your engine is 81.4 millimeters. To calculate the speed you can enter each value into our tool, but make sure you change the stroke length field to be millimeters.

You can now hit calculate to get an average piston speed of 1,602.36 feet per minute, or 26.71 feet per second if we change the unit of measurement to that.

Engine Pistons - Frequently Asked Questions

A piston is a relatively simple but impactful piece of an engine. To get a better understanding of what exactly it does, this video illustrates it very clearly.

The stroke refers to the total amount of space in the cylinder that it has to be moved within.

A common sign of a piston that has gone bad is white or gray smoke coming out of the exhaust pipe. You may also experience loss of power in terms of acceleration and top speed since there is less compression and less power being generated by one or more of the pistons.

A V8 will have 8 pistons, each cylinder has a single piston. So a V6 will have 6 pistons and a V4 will have 4 pistons.

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