🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1gqhdqINNjot@gap.caltech.edu>, carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick) writes:
|> In article <1992Dec17.170002.28389@u.washington.edu>, basiji@stein.u.washington.edu (David Basiji) writes:

|>  Perhaps you'd care to review the title of the
|> thread: "Flywheel batteries as EV power source."  That's why I was talking
|> about enough energy to travel for ~100 miles at freeway speeds.  Now, if you
|> simply want to use the flywheel for load averaging, then we're talking about a
|> LOT less energy stored in the flywheel.  In that application, I'd agree with
|> you that the dangers of a catastrophic failure of the flywheel would be quite
|> acceptable.
|> 
|> =It is the flywheel which provides the motive force
|> =for the vehicle via some clutch and gearbox or torque converter.
|> 
|> The idea in this thread was that the flywheel is part of a generator which
|> provides electrical power to the vehicle's electric motor.  That's what the
|> "EV" stands for in the title of the thread, and why it refers to the flywheel
|> as a "battery."

I've seen massive rotating objects being used in electrical power generation.
For instance, a turbine shaft in a hydroelectric generator that looks the size
of a spinning boxcar. If the water was shut off, the thing would grind to a
halt pretty quick because of the counter torque from a loaded generator (Some
generators are run as motors so that the power production is kept up; you don't
want to have to stop and restart this spinning boxcar). This shaft isn't
running all that fast so there isn't as much fear of explosive breakdown, but
I bet there's a lot of kinetic energy.

A flywheel that has the power to run a car at highway speeds (I read in the
paper that 8 hp can maintain the speed on average) can be compared to giving
a car a big slap in the rear and seeing how far it can coast. If you want to
store so much kinetic energy, you'll need a very fast wheel. It shouldn't
slow down too much unless you can pick it up again.

I've had little toy cars with flywheels and toy cars with windup springs.
How about spring energy or gravitational energy?

-- 

Henry Choy
choy@cs.usask.ca

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