Jhula principle - increase speed by applying brakes.

[prajna]

I posted in http://www.overunity.com/index.php/topic,1763.msg26525.html#msg26525 about (what is for me at least) a new idea that folows on from Mikovic's system.  I thought that rather than cluter up the Mikovic thread I would start a new one, so here it is.

Examining the Mikovic arrangement and modelling it in wm2d I noticed that if the balance beam is free to rotate then there are periods in the oscillation of the system where latching the pendulum to the balance beam would increase the momentum.  Basically, I began to see that we could increase the energy in a system not by investing more energy into it but by putting on the brakes, as it were.

For a more detailed explaination take a look at http://declarepeace.org.uk/jhula/

If someone has time to reduce the size of the animated .gif I have linked from that page then I would be most grateful.

[bitRAKE]

What ideas do you have on a braking system - both with regard to extracting power and minimizing wear? This is very similar to Mikovic's device (I still believe it is equivalent to a double pendulum) as two measured positions are needed to the trigger (lock, in the case of Jhula) the pendulum.

[prajna]

Sadly, regenerative braking would not be suitable for latching this system since at the point when you want to engage the brake the pendulum is not moving with respect to the counterweight.  So the latch/unlatch mechanism would simply be used to increase the momentum in the system and energy would be extracted from the counterweight axle. Or at least that is how it appears to me at this stage.  There may be other parts of the cycle where regenerative braking could be used (where the pendulum has greater angular momentum than the counterweight) but I believe that the main driving force is in taking advantage of the asymmetric centre of mass when it occurs in our favour.

I predict that there comes a speed beyond which we can no longer increase the momentum because the pendulum will be flung out to its maximum extent whilst it is rising against gravity.  To extract energy we might use regenerative braking to keep the machine operating in the RPM band between that maximum and the point where the counterweight is swinging rather than spinning.

[prajna]

Oooh, this is getting really fun!  I have just added a very rudimentary latching system to Jhula and it looks excellent.  I have attached a wm2d model for anyone who would like a preview.  I want to tidy it up somewhat before making an .avi and animated .gif and posting them to the website.

The model breaks eventually (something that wm2d isn't handling correctly) but it works better than I had expected with this rough model.

[prajna]

Here is a screenshot of the graphs and a new model with a redesigned latch.  I am still experimenting but I guess I should do a neater job of the latching system. The output is rather extraordinary and I don't feel entirely confident that wm2d handles polygons well but it looks good.