Here's the Wired post. Kinda interesting, I always liked the flywheel idea, but the weight and speed of the flywheel seems like it'd be a problem. A pneumatic solution is cool, I wonder what kind of condensation and other heat issues you'd get. The inefficiency of converting mechanical to electrical energy will always bother me until we get some nice superconductors going, but I'll be all right.
Ford did something like that to a concept car version of the F250 a couple years ago. If I recall, they were compressing some kind of fluid upon braking, and releasing it at acceleration. They were getting 35mpg with a F250 superduty. I'm not sure why this isn't coming to market yet. I imagine there are some safety considerations givin the pressures on tubes and storage devices with this. You get that thing fully compressed and then crash real hard. That couldn't be good.
Someone please correct me (and I know you will thanks) would not a big high mass spinning flywheel act like a gyroscope and tend to resist changes of direction.
i think we are talking forward momentum and emergency stops. the brakes would have all that much more kinetic energy to stop with a flywheel like that
Yes, it was the Ford Tonka Concept. IT was the prototype for the new Superduty. It was similar to the Prius's regenerative braking system, but it captured the braking force as mechanical energy rather than electrical. As with the Prius, it was most beneficial in stop and go traffic. Made a huge difference in mileage. Here it is. If they had actually made this, I'd be driving this rathe than the Prius. Here is a tech blurb about the Hydraulic Launch Assist: "Ford has also cooperated with automotive supplier Eaton Corporation to introduce Hydraulic Launch Assist (HLA) into the Mighty F-350 Tonka's powertrain. A brand new concept designed to greatly improve fuel economy, HLA recovers some of the energy lost during braking and converts and stores it as hydraulic pressure. During acceleration this stored energy is released and its torque applied to the driveshaft through the clutch. For 10-15 seconds all acceleration comes from the HLA system while the engine idles."
I think the only direction change it would resist is falling over. Like a top, they're happy to move sideways, aka turn. Of course, I dropped my Physics major.
Yea.. I don't know much about it.. whether its mounted vertical or horizontal.... I was thinking vertical.... sounds like your thinking more like a top.. horizontal?.. I don't know. Would probrably make for a very stable ride going down the road, but if mounted horizontal "like a top", even bouncing down the road would tend to stablize to make a nice ride, but the kinetic energy absorbed by the centrifugal force may kill the efficiency of the gyro. All this is pure speculation... would be fun to test,....
yea.. they would fight against each other and both would lose.. kinda like fighting against your wife!! :lol: :lol:
If it was mounted vertically it would be just like having another wheel spinning. I think that would make the most sense
force of the wheel would be perpendic to the direction of rotation. if rotate is parallel to front of car as opposed to parallel to length of car, force will be straight out or pointing towards front. like a top that seems to never fall, the reason is the force exerted is up because direction of spin is parallel to the surface its on keeping the top upright
OK my dyslexia did me in I did not consider orienting in the other direction because I was visualizing a more simple linkage like the fly wheel on a car or the clutch. Very interesting.
I know there have been test vehicles using flywheel energy storage systems. The ones I recal were city busses in the late 90's in Europe. The flywheel power packs used two flywheels rotating in opposite directions. The disadvantages of flywheels is the same as many other alternative energy sources... size, weight and expense. The flywheel packs were heavy and used a lot of energy just to keep everything working. To keep the mass down, the flywheels rotated at 100,000 RPM. It required a very strong "blast shield" around it to contain any shrapnel in the event of failure. They had to be held in a vacumn and use magnetic (non-contact) bearing or the enrgy loss was too great. Obviously, this used a lot of energy to maintain and was expensive and bulky. The outer rim of the flywheel was the rotor of a motor-generator and the stator was in the housing around it. That was how the energy was put in and taken out. There are flywheel storage systems out there for UPS applications. Perhaps in time, some of the difficulties will be worked out and volumes will get to where it is cost effective for mobile applications. Steve T
It would be different because the wheel would be much more massive and spinning with high energy (as that's its purpose). The only arrangement that makes sense for a vehicle moving and rotating in 2 dimensions (simplified description of what a car does) is for the flywheel to spin around an axis purpendicular to the plane formed by those dimesions (like a top). This arrangement will not interfere with direction or rotation changes within that plane (moving and turning) but will resist direction changes that cause the axis of rotation to change (flipping and sudden changes in attitude, ie. rapid banking or encountering sudden steep hill). (This was my best mechanical engineering course.)
