Turbine Engine Technology for Cars

DaveG1 · Post by **DaveG1** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 12:18 pm

the metal shell was only there to provide a shape for the containment. All the stopping pover came from the kevlar wrapping. The fibers caught the fragmnets and dissipated the energy across a wide fibery area, like a bullet proof vest. Same idea. We had bursts of up to 77.000 rpm where only little bits got through. After rigging the tests I had to clean the mess and reassemble the parts like they do with an airplane crash so the mech engineers could see where the parts failed and try to compensate for the stresses. It was a mess to be sure, lots of carbon fiber dust and kevlar mixed with coolant and oil. EEEEW. I get shivers thinking about it right now.

Typrus · Post by **Typrus** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 2:31 pm

So pretty much the only thing that'd get thru was CF dust?
I hope you tested more than just rotational stress. You could get it to survive to 120k RPM, but then what if it gets violently jolted?
So how did you compensate for the gyroscopic effect? ou know, keep it from effecting cornering and what have you.

DaveG1 · Post by **DaveG1** » Sun Jan 16, 2005 3:38 pm

naw, more than carbon fiber dust got through. It made quite an impact. The whole idea was to test for more than rotational stress, but whether the thing got jolted off the gimbal or spun itself apart, the containment was the same. Once the sucker cut loose, no matter what the cause you still had to capture the energy. The gimbal system was what allowed the car to drive despite the inertia of the flywheel. Have you ever seen a boat compass? it was like that, or like a kids gyroscope. the flywheel stayed spinning basically on the same plane while the gimbals moved around it and let the car turn, go uphill, accelerate, decelerate etc.

Typrus · Post by **Typrus** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 12:10 am

(hums to the tune of a strange song of a little lady named Betty with a wild child remixed to a computized beat)
How did the gimble work? I mean, was this flywheel just connected to a generator that rotated with it or am I a crazy person?
You could try to thicken the metallic shell as well as the Kevlar, or you could get a military thingy that allowed this containment shield to be constructed of that revolutionary armor the Abrahms uses. If it can take a DU round, it can take carbon fiber. It might be a little weighty, but thats alright. Again, I'd rather take a performance boost than a CF splinter to the back of the head.

DaveG1 · Post by **DaveG1** » Tue Jan 18, 2005 9:05 pm

The flywheel was the generator AND the container. When the car was running off the turbine excess power went into the flywheel, when the car needed boost the flywheel gave off the power to accelerate or climb or whatever. It was sort of like an alternator in your car, it had a series of magnets that did the transferring of power in or out. There is an article in Time mag that shows the Rosen logo and the logo represented the magnetic bearing. The whole thing spun in a near perfect vacuum on a system of magnetic bearings. It never touched anything, it had to spin faster than any conventional bearing in existence so they divised this system where teh flywheel spun in a magnetic field.

As far as the gimbal goes, I am not sure I understand the question, are you asking how our specific gimbal was designed or are you asking how a gimbal works in general? Ours was a series of metal bands with 4 points of rotation spaced 90 degrees apart that compensated for motion. I would really have to show you a picture or something, it is sort of above my head. Did I mention I became full time ocean lifeguard after leaving Rosen? I am not too technical of a guy, but I swim pretty good.

I dont know with what they make Abrahms tanks, but we tried a lot of stuff. The best thing was the thin shell with Kevlar wrapping. The carbon fiber was not the biggest problem, the flywheel was pressed onto a thick metal shaft that went flying around after a burst. It was the metal parts that we were trying to hold in more than the fiber.

takza · Post by **takza** » Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:56 pm

Should have just put one wheel on it and used the flywheel to keep it up right? :rolleyes:

DaveG1 · Post by **DaveG1** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 12:37 am

yeah, then you could drive on the curbs w/o falling off. Or it would be like those old Evel Knevel bikes that you pulled the thing through to spin the wheel and send him off teh jump. It just had that one wheel that made it go. Used to bust the crap outta my knuckles with that stupid toy.

Typrus · Post by **Typrus** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 8:30 am

lol. I figured the flywheel was attached to a alternator type device.
I'm familiar with magnetic bearings. Very very smart system. Mag bearings and mag couplings. Saw some 30 minute thing on them on the Dicovery Channel a while back. Then did my own limited experimentation (being 11 at the time, I could only do so much experimentation lol) I almost wonder why they are not used more often, I mean, they last a heck of a lot longer than conventional bearings. I guess temperature is the big issue right now as high temps will destroy a magnet. (shrug) food for thought I guess.

DaveG1 · Post by **DaveG1** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 8:33 pm

Rosen's answer was to put the whole thing in a near perfect vacuum to reduce drag. At the speeds we were using it fershnizzle would have burned everything up. It worked pretty well actually.

Typrus · Post by **Typrus** » Thu Jan 20, 2005 11:23 pm

Hooray for aerodynamic drag lol...
How the heck was the vacuum maintained? Big vacuum pump?

DaveG1 · Post by **DaveG1** » Fri Jan 21, 2005 12:24 am

You know, I don't have an answer for that. For what I did we had a commercial vacuum pump that was about the size of a regular old 2hp compressor. Pump it down and seal er up and let er rip. I'm not sure how they were going to do it once the thing got into production. BTW I signed some sort of thing saying I wasn't going to sell Rosen secrets, so when you all go and do the Rosen thing you never heard of me, OK?