🚀 go-pugleaf

carl@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Carl J Lydick) writes:

>Sorry, but you apparently missed a post early in this thread where the
>designers of one of these flywheels were quoted as saying that in a
>catastrophic failure, the flywheel WOULD disintegrate.  They described the
>flywheel after disintegration as "fluff."  This bit of disingenuousness was
>apparently meant to make the flywheel seem safe.  After all, "fluff" couldn't
>possibly be dangerous, could it?


yup.  I have a little demo of the power of "fluff" I occasionally do
when I have visitors in the lab.  I take a .308 NATO brass, load
it almost to the bottleneck with 2400 powder (a fast pistol powder) and
plug the top of the case with a wad of ordinary kitchen paper towel.
I load the whole assembly in my silhouette pistol and fire it 
at a piece of 1" plywood from a distance of about 3 inches.  The bit 
of paper towel "fluff", exiting the barrel at a velocity of about 4000 feet
per second, easily penetrates the inch of wood.  When fired at a distance of 
over about a foot, the air drag (not to mention that it is spinning at about
240,000 RPM from the rifling twist) has so disintegrated the "fluff" that it 
does not even imprint the wood.  In the context of this flywheel discussion, 
of course, the "fluff" would travel in a vacuum until it hit something and 
so would NOT be disrupted.

John
-- 
John De Armond, WD4OQC               |Interested in high performance mobility?  
Performance Engineering Magazine(TM) | Interested in high tech and computers? 
Marietta, Ga                         | Send ur snail-mail address to 
jgd@dixie.com                        | perform@dixie.com for a free sample mag
Need Usenet public Access in Atlanta?  Write Me for info on Dixie.com.