Sjack Abeling Gravity Wheel and the Worlds first Weight Power Plant

[Cloxxki]

Post removed by poster on account of nonsense.

[mondrasek]

But a flexible chain wrapped around a "D" shape doen't spin out of control. Just sits there.

Exactly!  Let's think about that.  The parts of the chain on the wheel (curved part of the D) are creating a torque.  How much torque?  Well the piece at 3 o'clock is heading straight down, so all of its mass is causing a torque on the wheel.  And the torque due to that one piece is enough to lift exactly one link in the vertical part of the D equally.  They balance.

But what about the pieces of the chain on the wheel at around 1 o'clock?  Most of it's weight is just resting on the wheel.  Only a small portion is creating torque.  And so it is not creating enough torque to lift one piece vertically.  So there needs to be more pieces on the curved section in order to lift the ones in the straight section.  And in every case and configuration, those pieces falling balance those you are trying to raise.  With just the weights, slots, and ramps, that is exactly the same as Abeling's wheel sim.

Dusty's first wheel, in all it's crudeness, does see the weight reaching a very good high already on the first self-started rotation. It SEEMS like a matter of perfecting the weight's path and the system's friction, and it'll push that weight right over the top, and all the way into that slot.
When on weight has reached 12 o'clock, the other is already some way up, albeit close to the hub.

It seems so all right.  How high the weights are raised shows how good the build is so far.  But what is actually keeping Dusty's wheel from spinning is the exact amount of energy he is loosing due to friction and other losses.  If he gets rid of all those losses, the wheel will spin forever!  It will spin exactly at the speed that you initially spin it.  But it will not accelerate.  And it will decelerate if a load is applied.  It will be a flywheel, not a gravity energy conversion wheel.  (No disrespect Dusty.  You are doing a beautiful job.  I envy your talent and resources.  I'd love to do that more than sims myself!)  Every improvement that Dusty makes will move the weight closer to going over the top.  Every mistake in his adjustments will bring it the other way.  But he will never get it to the top, let alone have it go over.  Not without something else.  And maybe he'll figure out what that something else is along the way and tell us all!  And so I wish him luck.

M.

[Omnibus]

@mondrasek,

What is needed is something simpler than what wm2d tries to do. We don't need calculations for hundreds of frames to show something spinning. Calculations at two dispositions of the parts, one before and one after the equilibrium one is all we need. Is there a program that can do that or probably wm2d may do it somehow and it will spare confusing it with too many calculations per unit time?

[mondrasek]

See, what the whole thing amounts to is just conflict of beliefs, not objective scientific proof. Despite your tendency to carry on your belief a little further, which is only natural because mechanical devices don’t exhibit the claimed unusual behavior, conservatively wm2d doesn’t prove conclusively anything either way.

You are correct.  I believe that when every test shows a balanced wheel with the exceptions of understood computational errors, this proves the sim to be a non-runner.  You believe it does not.

Would be great if you could show at what mutual disposition you think the elements reach equilibrium and show analytically that the torques on the left and right at that disposition become equal in magnitude. Not a bad idea is to also show an earlier disposition whereby that torque inequality reverses sense compared to a disposition of the elements after the equilibrium one.

I could easily do the calculations.  Only problem I have are the ellipses in the model.  When I export them out as DXF, they become diamonds.  So the DXF definition used by WM2D is not recognized by AutoCAD.  If I draw ellipses in AutoCAD, they are slightly different in shape.  So I need a way to export that particular sim geometry.  Or would you accept if I replace those ellipses with the ones from AutoCAD for purposes of the analysis?  I can't put them into the sim, since WM2D does not recognize the DXF ellipses of AutoCAD either.

[Omnibus]

@mondrasek,

You are correct.  I believe that when every test shows a balanced wheel with the exceptions of understood computational errors, this proves the sim to be a non-runner.  You believe it does not.

See, that shouldn't be if the analysis is rigorous. Laws of classical mechanics applied here are understood well individually, it's only their acting in concert for all the parts that may bring about a surprise and so far wm2d doesn't allow us to count it out.

As for the calculations, I think it'd be interesting to see your methodology first so I'd be curious to see calculations done the way you can do them for the moment.