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'Revolutions per minute' (abbreviated 'rpm', 'RPM', 'r/min', or 'r·min⁻¹') is a unit of frequency: the number of full rotations completed in one minute around a fixed axis. It is most commonly used as a measure of rotational speed or angular velocity of some mechanical component.
Standards organizations generally recommend the symbol '''r/min''', which is more consistent with the general use of unit symbols. This is not enforced as an international standard; in French, for example, 'tr/mn' (tours par minute) is commonly used.
The corresponding International System of Units (SI) unit would be the 'hertz' and we have:
:1 r/min = (1/60) revolutions per second = 0.01666667 Hz
In the SI one often uses the unit for angular velocity which is 'radians per second' ('rad·s⁻¹'):
:1 r/min = 2π rad·min⁻¹ = 2π/60 rad·s⁻¹ = 0.10471976 rad·s⁻¹

Contents

Examples

See also

References

Examples

Main articles: Orders of magnitude (angular velocity)


★ On some kinds of disc or tape-like recording media, the rotational speed of the medium under the read head is a standard given in r/min. Gramophone (phonograph) records, for example, typically rotate steadily at 16, 33⅓, 45 or 78 r/min.

★ Modern dental drills can rotate at up to 500,000 r/min.

★ The second hand of a conventional analogue clock rotates at 1 r/min.

★ Audio CD players read their discs at a constant 150KB/s and thus must vary the disc's rotational speed from around 500 r/min when reading at the innermost edge, and 180 r/min at the outer edge. CD-ROM drives have their maximum rotational speeds are rated in multiples of this figure, even though they do not hold to constant read speeds when reading from data tracks.

★ A washing machine's drum may rotate at 500 to 1800 r/min during the spin cycles.

★ An automobile's engine typically varies between 700 and 7000 r/min (though there are certain cars that can rev as high as 11,000 r/min.

★ A piston aircraft engine typically rotates between 2000 and 3000 r/min.

★ A computer's hard drive rotates at 3600, 4200, 5400, or 7200 r/min on IDE types and 10 000 or 15 000 r/min on some SATA and SCSI and Fibre Channel drives.

★ The engine of a Formula One racing car can reach 20,000 r/min under some circumstances.^[1]

★ A Zippe-type centrifuge for enriching uranium spins at 90 000 r/min or faster.^[2]

★ Gas turbine engines rotate at tens of thousands of r/min. JetCat model aircraft turbines are capable of over 100 000 r/min with the fastest hitting 165 000 r/min.^[3]

★ An electromechanical battery (EMB) works at 60 000 - 200 000 rpm range using a passively magnetic levitated flywheel in vacuum^[4]. The choice of the flywheel material is not the most dense, but the one that pulverises the most safely, at surface speeds about 7 times the speed of sound.

★ A turbocharger can reach 290 000 r/min while 80 000 - 200 000 r/min are common.

See also

★ Orders of magnitude (angular velocity)

★ Constant linear velocity, or 'CLV', used when referring to the speed of audio CDs

★ Constant angular velocity, or 'CAV', used when referring the speed of gramophone (phonograph) records

★ Turn (geometry)

References

1. FIA on Formula One Engines
2. Slender and Elegant, It Fuels the Bomb
3. JetCat P-60 turbine specification page
4. original paper