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- Newsgroups: sci.electronics
- Path: sparky!uunet!seas.smu.edu!mustafa
- From: mustafa@seas.smu.edu (Mustafa Kocaturk)
- Subject: EV Power Source versus Gyroscope - Newtonian Mechanics
- Message-ID: <1992Dec17.204654.23682@seas.smu.edu>
- Summary: Precession will not cause significant friction
- Sender: news@seas.smu.edu (USENET News System)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: turbo_f.seas.smu.edu
- Cc: mustafa
- Organization: SMU - School of Engineering & Applied Science - Dallas
- References: <Ligon-161292082905@3.1.100.11> <BzD4As.Cup@cs.uiuc.edu> <1992Dec16.160533.981@cmkrnl.com>
- Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 20:46:54 GMT
- Lines: 124
-
- In article <1992Dec16.160533.981@cmkrnl.com> jeh@cmkrnl.com misinterprets
- the effects of precession while quoting morrison@cs.uiuc.edu (Vance Morrison),
- who wrote in article <BzD4As.Cup@cs.uiuc.edu>:
- >> If you REALLY don't want the angular inertia, you can get rid of it one
- >> of two ways. First, you could mount the flywheel in a gyroscope. Thus
- >> the flywheel simply moves without effecting the car. This also removes
- >> flywheel axial loads.
- >
- >I think what you mean here is "mount the flywheel in a gimbal mounting". Fine,
- >but now you have to come up with a really creative way of coupling large
- >amounts of mechanical or electrical energy to the part of the car that's
- >outside the gimbal mount. This coupling, plus the gimbal bearings on which the
- >flywheel assembly pivots, needs to be just as frictionless as the ones the
- >flywheel spins on -- any heat produced here is energy drained from the
- >"battery". This ain't gonna be cheap! Nor is it likely to survive long under
- >the "maintenance habits" of the typical American car owner.
-
- I believe this is a joke. The motion of the flywheel housing
- relative to the car will be limited, as will the energy lost in
- friction in the gimbal bearings. The reasons are given below.
-
- I would prefer an overdamped gimbal-spring suspension
- to an undamped spring suspension used in the electromechanical
- battery model shown in the special report entitled
- "The great battery barrier" of the November issue of IEEE Spectrum.
-
- There will be precession as long as there is a torque
- applied to the the spinning flywheel with a component outside
- the axis of spin. The precession is proportional
- to the external torque causing it. Precession stops when
- the external torque is removed.
-
- Frictionless gimbal bearings are essential in gyroscopes
- because they are designed to keep an accurate
- attitude angle over a reasonable period of time,
- and any external torque would destroy the initial attitude
- angle information. Not only are gimbal bearings necessary, but
- external effects such as air friction, cable stress, and
- electromagnetic forces must also be minimized by the same token.
-
- There is no such requirement in the case of a flywheel-powered
- electrical vehicle, since we are not worried about destroying the
- precision of the attitude angle of the flywheel axis.
-
- >> The other possibilty is to have to counter-rotating
- >> flywheels. In this case the angular inertia cancels out (there is high
- >> axial load between the two flywheels, however).
- >
- >The real problem I see with all such ideas is that the flywheel's attempts to
- >precess are going to increase the friction in its bearings -- which need to be
- >VERY low friction.
-
- The flywheel attempts to precess only when there is an external
- *torque* not parallel to its axis of rotation. I used the word
- "parallel", because I am speaking about a torque as opposed to
- a force. The torque is the vector product of a force and a distance
- vector.
-
- In a flywheel-powered vehicle, the torque will exist only when the car
- has an acceleration component not perpedicular to the flywheel axis
- and it will be negligible because the flywheel will have a negligible
- reaction due to the relatively small friction of the gimbal bearings.
-
- The motion will be limited because all that has to occur is that
- the flywheel should either retain its original attitude angle
- or assume the new attitude forced by the vehicle. There will be
- a reaction torque from the flywheel proportional to the angular
- acceleration of the vehicle, the angular momentum of the flywheel
- and perpendicular to both. Equilibrium will be reached
- as the vehicle absorbs the reaction torque,
- which was already described in other articles of this thread.
-
- A more critical design question is whether the magnetic suspension
- of the flywheel can handle the forces involved if springs are used.
- The springs act as shock absorbers and can be used to ensure that
- the maximum possible angular acceleration of the vehicle
- does not drive the flywheel out of its axis.
-
- For coupling energy, no brushes will be necessary:
- Flexible wiring can be used instead,
- as the flywheel axis will try to retain its vertical position,
- and all the motion will be fluctuations around this attitude angle
- equal in magnitude to the changes in the attitude angle of the vehicle.
-
- A small force times a small distance will produce a small amount
- of work. Then the energy lost in the precession effects will
- be negligible compared to the loss in wiring, imperfect vacuum,
- hysteresis, eddy currents, etc, let alone that caused by
- the dynamics of the vehicle, tires and air turbulance, etc.
-
- [ ... discussion that I mainly agree deleted for brevity ... ]
-
- >The real trouble with this is that PV electricity is just too damned expensive
- >in the first place. The cost of the money to build the system, plus the cost
- >of the land, plus the cost of the PV cells (which is an ongoing cost -- they
- >don't last forever!), is so high that having free energy doesn't make much
- >difference. (there may be a breakthrough here soon with "rectennas" that work
- >directly at lightwave frequencies.)
-
- I agree with these cost arguments. I am not sure, however that the "rectenna"
- concept can be applied at lightwave frequencies. The drawbacks are
-
- o Natural light is not coherent, i. e. it does not have a single
- frequency and phase. By this token, the powers are added rather
- than multiplied. The "rectenna" technology is suited to coherent
- radiation, to which the receptors can be tuned for maximum
- efficiency.
-
- o It may be considerably more difficult to build small, high precision
- antennas using microelectronics technology, not to mention
- the fast diodes required to rectify lightwave frequencies with
- available semiconductor materials, than to build higher efficiency
- photovoltaic cells.
-
- >
- > --- Jamie Hanrahan, Kernel Mode Consulting, San Diego CA
- >Internet: jeh@cmkrnl.com, hanrahan@eisner.decus.org, or jeh@crash.cts.com
- >Uucp: ...{crash,eisner,uunet}!cmkrnl!jeh
-
- Yours respectfully,
- Mustafa
- --
- Mustafa Kocaturk mustafa@seas.smu.edu EE Dept., Room 305A, Caruth Bldg.
- Home: 214-706-5954 Office: 214-768-1475 SMU Box 753190, Dallas, TX 75275
-