simple overbalanced wheel with flywheel

[gyulasun]

Hi MileHigh,

I edited Rafael's drawing a little and tilted the wheel clockwise by 5° from its horizontal position to indicate mainly the balls position in that moment.  (My editing is not complete because the ramp (red line) should have been also displaced to the right a little, it is not rotating with the wheel of course.)

Well, because you completely disregard the horizontal distances of the balls from the center point C, so you completely neglect the rotational torque ball B2 exerts on the whole wheel via the distance (radius of the wheel).  In this respect, in this moments of the rotation of the wheel, the operation of a simple lever, a seesaw is to be considered ( http://avstop.com/ac/apgeneral/machines.html ).
I agree that balls B3 and B4 should be lifted up of course and in order to get a continuos rotation,  the distance and the tilting of the ramp should be very carefully chosen (if possible of course) so that the rotational torque of ball B2 should overcome any other counter torque of balls B3 and B4.
This is mainly what webby also hinted at.

Gyula

[mondrasek]

The bottom part with the ramp reminds me very much of the Sjack Abeling wheel.  In analyzing that it was learned that the inward movement of the weights due to the ramp is not free.  It is the motion of the wheel that pushes the weight against the ramp.  The ramp then gives its required counterforce.  The result is that the torque on the wheel due to B3 is larger than the value from its weight x the distance to the axle.  If you draw a force diagram of the B3 properly it needs to be made with vectors that are normal to the ramp and the wheel, none of which are 90 degrees at that location.

An interesting thought experiment is to imagine the wheel running CCW.  Why wouldn't it be able to do that?  If you try this you may see how B3 is acting like a cylindrical pin being pushed between the blades of a pair of scissor to force them open.  It may make it easier to understand how the resultant forces (torques) due to B3 can be larger than just its weight x distance to the axle.

M.

[gyulasun]

Hi Mondrasek,

I understand and agree with you and at the moment, to counter the extra force you refer to as the counterforce of the ramp, I think the only hope to counter that force is to use a higher diameter wheel so that the torque effect of the weight of B2 on the shaft could be higher with its higher distance from the shaft.  Also the tilting angle of the ramp obviously greatly influences its counter force to the weights.  This is one reason I asked Rafael whether he has already done some tests on this setup.

rgds, Gyula

[MileHigh]

Gentlemen:

I agree that I am completely disregarding the horizontal distances.  If you can envision what I am saying, it's all about looking at this rotating system from an energy perspective.  The only true energy dynamics are the vertical displacement of the balls.  You can ignore the rotational inertia of the big wheel and the balls themselves.  What do you end up seeing?   Balls that move down one unit and then must be lifted back up one unit for a net energy change of zero.  In the final analysis that's all that counts.  Many times in problems like this you can disregard all of the complicated dynamics and just look at the energy to find the solution to your problem.  For example, a coil and a capacitor form an LC resonator.  If the coil has one amp of current flowing through it what is the peak capacitor voltage?  Do you have to work out the differential equations and convert the solution into a time-based or angle-based algebraic equation?  The answer is no you don't have to, you just have to calculate the energy in the coil and then calculate the required capacitor voltage to give you the same energy.

So, people look at the diagram and they see how the ball B2 (thanks Gyula for the diagram) can give you more clockwise torque than the other balls.  The problem is they don't look any further than that.  As the wheel starts to turn the clockwise torque from B2 will decrease while there is counter-clockwise torque from B3 and B4.   When does the clockwise toque from B2 drop to the point when it is less than the counter-clockwise torque from B3 and B4?   What angle does that happen at?  Nobody knows do they?  As B4 starts to go up the red ramp you can see how it's being "pinched" between two surfaces that are trying to make it spin in opposite directions.  What are the two coefficients of friction between the ball and the two surfaces?  Which way does the ball turn when it goes up the red ramp?  How much energy is lost as the ball goes up the red ramp?

Let's look at the problem another way.  All four balls do exactly the same motion.  Therefore you should be able to analyze one ball and see if it adds or decreases the rotational energy of the big wheel.  If we say B2 starts at zero degrees, then we know from zero to 90 degrees B2 applies torque to the wheel.  At 90 degrees the torque becomes zero.  So, who can generate the function "Torque_on_Wheel = Ball_weight x Some_function_of_angle."   Who can then integrate on that function from zero to 90 degrees to get the increase in big wheel energy over the first 90 degrees?

Certainly the integration from 90 degrees to 180 degrees will give you a net reduction in the rotational energy of the big wheel.  Anybody want to try to generate that function?  That one is a doozie because of the extra friction energy drain from going up the ramp.

That's most of the calculation, but there is still another 180 degrees to integrate on before we get the final final big wheel energy after rotating through a single revolution with a single ball on the track.

So it's apparent to me that many of you can only see the B2 ball in the start position as per Gyula's diagram and you think wow a Bessler wheel!!!  Well you can't do that.   You need to integrate over the full 360 degrees and generate a "Torque = some_function_of_angle" equation to do that.  That is a really hard thing to do and you have to start playing with "dTheta" differentials.

We haven't even discussed the moment of inertia of the ball itself and how that would factor into everything.

So I choose to go the "smart" route and just look at the ball gravitational energy analysis.  We know that is only a function of up-down and nothing else.  When you talk gravitational energy, it's like the higher you go the higher the voltage.  The lower you go the lower the voltage.  So "up-down" is like you are in a voltage gradient.

MileHigh

[Ghost]

thanks for sharing this idea 

http://opensourceenergy.net/index.php?topic=9.0