Ancient machinery provides a new world for the development of human beings. With the continuous innovation and change of machinery, human ideas are also changing. There are many mechanical achievements in ancient China, which have their own characteristics in any industry.
Many professional designs and applications use the knowledge of mechanical principles and dynamics, and many inventions are among the world’s top. Both structural design and dynamic application have made great achievements.
1、 Various structural designs
Structural design is the first step in the design of ancient tools. As early as the Neolithic age, people have widely used stone and bone tools to carry out the transportation and manufacturing of objects. The application of lever principle has been found for a long time.
As early as the Eastern Han Dynasty, gears have been used in a variety of machinery, such as water rotary grinding, guide car and so on.
Water rotary continuous mill is a kind of manual water lifting machine based on the lever principle. One section of the cross bar is tied with a bucket, and the other end is used to control the lifting to get water. There is also the shape design of ancient wheels. In front of the most primitive carriage, some people tried many shapes of wheels. Later, after trying, it was found that the round wheel best conforms to the bearing principle, and its stability and rotation efficiency are the highest.
Structural design needs to comply with engineering principles, good structural design will not only improve the efficiency of the machine, but also make the tools more simple and beautiful. In the structural design, the compliance of scientific principles is the basis.
In the spring and Autumn period, in order to control the shooting speed, the precision of the crossbow machine and the exquisite mechanical device on the surface have reached a very high level. There are more than ten specifications of the crossbow. The formation of these specifications shows that the shape design standard of the machine has been established in the Han Dynasty.
Among them, Kao Gong Ji is the earliest existing handicraft monograph, which studies the firing speed and flight stability of the workpiece, and the warships and ships of the Han Dynasty have undergone special structural design and appearance research. There are also censers in the house. In the exquisite censer, no matter how the spherical censer rolls, the hemispherical furnace body at its central position can be kept in a horizontal state, ensuring the normal combustion of the incense burner.
2、 Application of scientific principles in machinery
In the period of farming, there was a simple principle found that the invention of Lei was that ancient people in order to facilitate plowing, sowing crops, to carry out agricultural production.
With the development of production, people constantly improved, replaced the board edge with stone, and later completed the pottery. The development of iron plow is an important agricultural achievement, marking the first step of human transformation of nature.
In the Han Dynasty, the state began to vigorously promote advanced production tools and farming methods, and the plough was constantly improved. In many places, the plough wall began to have a plough wall. The invention of the plough wall is a major improvement on the plough. The plough without the plough wall can not achieve the function of rooting and scarifying the soil, and the plough must rely on the help of other tools.
With the plow wall, you can easily loosen the soil. The plow wall has a certain direction, which makes a soil ridge turn over, and bury the weeds on the soil in the ground as fertilizer. The plough of Han Dynasty is composed of the shaft, tip, bed, arrow and horizontal part. In addition to the advanced plough wall, there are also devices that can adjust the depth of plough soil. Compared with the plough in the Warring States period, the plough has made a great breakthrough.
At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, a new type of irrigation tool “keel water wheel” appeared. As the most advanced irrigation tool at that time, it used the pedal function to irrigate farmland. It was also the first attempt to use kinetic energy and mechanical energy conversion, and also to carry out mechanical operation.
Because the keel waterwheel depends on human operation, it is often not enough water. Although it can be operated by one or two people, there are still many disadvantages.
Later, in the Yuan Dynasty, the keel water wheel was changed. In terms of power machinery, there are many plate leaves on the water wheel to facilitate the water impact. The water impact makes the water wheel start to rely on the hydraulic power, and the water turns into the driving force of the water wheel. Therefore, the water in the deep ditch is transported to the shore, flows into the fields, and irrigates the crops.
In the Han Dynasty, the grinding machine was used to process rice and beans into flour. There were two pieces of grinding, which were made up of two round stones. Grain flowed from the grinding hole into the grinding chamber, evenly distributed around, and was ground into powder. There are both artificial and hydraulic mills. The mill with hydraulic power as power appeared in Jin Dynasty. The water percussion turbine drives the mill to rotate, which is more applied to people’s life.
3、 The change of life brought by machinery
Machinery makes people’s life more and more convenient, more time-saving and labor-saving. Many advanced technology and scientific creation reflect the production level of agriculture and handicraft industry at that time. Many mechanical manufacturing and product performance changes. Various technological methods emerge in endlessly. People irrigate farmland from original water extraction to water irrigation by bobbin, From the beginning, human power became water power.