Centrifugal Governor | Types of Governors

As we have already discussed what is a governor in an Engine, in this article, we are going to see how many different types of governors are available under Centrifugal Governor and Inertia Governor.

Governor Types

The governors are broadly classified as under centrifugal governors and the Inertia Governors. The Centrifugal governors are widely used than the inertia governors. In centrifugal Governors, there are different types available as described in the following tree diagram.

The classification of the Centrifugal Governor as follows.

• Pendulum type Governor
  • Watt Governor
• Loaded Type Governor
  • Dead Weight Governors
    • Porter Governors
    • Proell Governors
  • Spring-loaded Governors
    • Hartnell Governor
    • Hartung Governor
    • Wilson-Hartnell Governor
    • Pickering Governor

Centrifugal Governor Working

The main working principle behind these types of governors is the balancing of the centrifugal force.

The centrifugal governors consist of two balls of equal mass, which are attached to the arms as shown above diagram. These balls got a name governor balls or the fly balls.

• These balls will be revolving around the spindle which is driven by the engine.
• As you can see the above schematic diagram of a typical centrifugal governor, there are links joined to a sleeve where it can translate on the spindle freely.
• A bell crank lever is connected to the sleeve and the other end of it also will be connected to throttle valve located in the fuel supply passage.
• As the engine working, these balls also revolving around the spindle at a certain speed and maintained at a mean position radially with the speed of the engine due to the centrifugal force.
• Whenever there is a decrease in the engine speed due to the load, then the speed of the balls also changes and due to the less centrifugal force outwards, the balls revolve bit lower their means radial position.
• Then the sleeve connected by the links will automatically move downwards on the spindle, the bell crank lever opens the throttle valve to pass the more amount of fuel. So that the engine speed will be increased to its mean speed.

This is how the centrifugal governor works to govern the fuel supply and regulates the mean speed of the engine when there is a variation in the load. As we mentioned there is another type of governor based on the inertia principle called the Inertia Governers.

The Inertia governer is much more sensitive than the Centrifugal Governor. But the balancing of the revolving parts of the inertia governor is complicated. So that is why the centrifugal governors are most widely used due to their easy principle.

The different classification in the above Centrifugal governor will be discussed in the next articles please follow the URL linked above to know about each of them.

Conclusion

We have discussed what is the different types of the governor and their further classification. In the next articles, we have discussed each governor type in detail follow the URL linked above to know more about them. If you have any further thoughts on this topic, let us know in the comment section below