🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec17.205631.9731@u.washington.edu>, basiji@stein.u.washington.edu (David Basiji) writes:
> The energy is being used to split the covalent bonds that hold the flywheel
> together. In essence, you're separating charged atomic species and therefore
> converting the kinetic energy of the rotor into potential energy in the
> form of fragmented material.  The idea of the housing is to allow the
> rotor components enough time to interact with each other so that a large
> fraction of the energy goes into rotor destruction rather than housing
> destruction.

What?  Those covalent bonds aren't going to use up very much energy, it ain't
hard to break them.  In fact, breaking them likely has a net release of
energy.  Why do you think plastic gets hot when you stretch it?  Part of the
heat is the unrecoverable work you do on the bonds to stretch the material,
and part is the release of energy after breaking the bonds.  I've seen a
dramatic demonstration of this by putting a thick polymer cable under tension.
When it fails, it does so explosively and the material melts.

The "time" you seem so interested in regarding the housing is meaningless.
the particles are traveling so fast that they have a cratering interaction
with the housing - they and the housing they impact will melt - there is
no such thing as elastic collisions at these velocities.  The idea of
bits of rotor bouncing off the housing is a complete fallacy.  The regime
is one of melting and shock waves.  The rotor is most likely completely
destroyed by the time it interacts with the housing - the shock wave from
the failure would likely melt it.  The molten bits would still have
hypervelocity, and still melt the housing.


--
Richard Stead
Center for Seismic Studies
Arlington, VA
stead@seismo.css.gov