Sjack Abeling Gravity Wheel and the Worlds first Weight Power Plant

[Alexioco]

Here is my little contribution

Edit: wow I just had a good thought, if the weights raised like they do in my drawing (below) but straight under the axle and above the axle, the weights have no weight on the wheel, their weight is applied to the axle instead, so long as they raise in a straight line...

Alex

[Grimer]

Well, I've worked out the power cycle for the Sjack Abeling Gravity Wheel - and here it is.

http://i136.photobucket.com/albums/q171/frank260332/Sjackcycle.jpg

So it looks as though his gravity wheel really will work, though as he says, why someone didn't find this out a long time ago just by chance is a bit of a mystery.

Still, I suppose before knowledge of the Carnot cycle and the Leibniz calculus it would have been a bit of a mental stretch.

When I first recognised that the acceleration leg (d²x/dt²)and the rate of change of acceleration leg (the adiabatic leg - d³x/dt³) gave the potential for a power cycle I couldn't see where the other return legs were going to come from. But then I realised that cos everything is turning round the returning legs are the same as the outgoing legs. Tricky, eh!

But what on earth has this got to do with a Carnot cycle you may ask?

Well, think of the balls being thrown around as monster molecules and the structure enclosing them as the cylinder. The equivalent of the thermal potential change is the gravitational potential change and the adiabatic leg (the balls rising up) is where the motion energy is exchanged for gravitational energy.

If you don't understand what I'm on about (or even what I'm smoking  ) I can't say I blame you.
And if you want to ask questions I'll do my best to answer them.

Oh, and one more think to note. The containing structure can be made as stiff as needs be so no significant power is lost to the structure.

[Omnibus]

@Cherryman,

I’m looking at your KAD9.wm2d file. You had set the Torque on Polygon 5 to 1 on x and y1, as far as I can see. I reset it to zero on both axes and re-renedered it. It appears that it can still make full turns. There’s a problem with the fourth steel ball, however, which existed even with the original torque which I don’t know how to fix. Mind you I’ve never worked with WM2D before.

[Cherryman]

@Cherryman,

I’m looking at your KAD9.wm2d file. You had set the Torque on Polygon 5 to 1 on x and y1, as far as I can see. I reset it to zero on both axes and re-renedered it. It appears that it can still make full turns. There’s a problem with the fourth steel ball, however, which existed even with the original torque which I don’t know how to fix. Mind you I’ve never worked with WM2D before.

Neither do I 

Untill i have a satisfying setup, i do not much with the parameters of WM2D, but feel free to try of finetuning it will help.  Good luck.

[Omnibus]

When you change the material of the Body(5) - Polygon to Standard (whatever it means) from the initial Wood w/ steel balls weighing 100kg it makes 2 full rotations. During the third rotation there's a problem w/ the second to last ball. Nevertheless, if I'm doing it right, I think this is a notable achievement because it means that the wheel regains on its own what it has lost. It appears that it's now only a matter of fine tuning to have a working gravity wheel. Good job @Cherryman.