triple-expansion

American  

[trip-uhl-ik-span-shuhn] / ˌtrɪp əl ɪkˈspæn ʃən /

adjective

1. noting a power source, especially a steam engine, using the same fluid at three successive stages of expansion to do work in three or more cylinders.

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Example Sentences

Life’s sister magazine, Time, was no less susceptible to his rough-diamond charm, calling him a “hard-headed, steel-willed” corporate chieftain with “horse sense, a command of men, and the driving force of a triple-expansion engine.”

From Salon • Mar. 22, 2016

At that time it was given to Captain Rieber because he had horse sense, a command of men and the driving force of a triple-expansion engine.

From Time Magazine Archive

There would be much talk of pistons, displacement of cylinders, stroke, reciprocating engines, steeple compound and triple-expansion engines, Scotch boilers, winches, compressors, dynamos, composition and iron propellers and the latest developments in crude-oil burners.

From Cappy Ricks Retires by Kyne, Peter B. (Peter Bernard)

It never went dotty at the time you needed it most and it was a vertical inverted triple-expansion direct-acting propeller!'

From Love, the Fiddler by Osbourne, Lloyd

The effect of a triple-expansion engine is sometimes obtained in a measure by making the volume of the low-pressure cylinder of a compound engine 6 or 7 times that of the high-pressure.

From Steam Engines Machinery's Reference Series, Number 70 by Anonymous