Flywheels

[1966Crew]

Hi guys. Back awhile there was talk about the quality of Listeroid flywheels and the effects of overspeeding them. Well I was doing some research on my Kohler K241 engine and came accross this web site. Shows the catastrophic results of overspeeding a 9.5 inch flywheel on a pulling garden tractor. Imagine what a Listeroid would do!

http://members.aol.com/tractorpulling/flywheelbreakage/flybreak.htm

It is just implied but looks like the guys family jewels took some of the impact ! Ouch!

Jon

[rcavictim]

That dude was lucky he wasn`t killed.  Flywheels, compressed air tanks, steam boilers and even large banks of capacitors are devices that can store large amounts of energy that if released suddenly and improperly or unexpectedly can cause great property damage or fatalities.

[Rtqii]

... and even large banks of capacitors are devices that can store large amounts of energy that if released suddenly and improperly or unexpectedly can cause great property damage or fatalities.

The peak power generated by high voltage capacitive discharge makes a dynamite explosion look like a coal fire. A moderately sized capacitor bank can produce peak energies that exceed those released when firing even the largest military artillery pieces. I am not exaggerating.

What is the best way to rapidly energize a high voltage capacitor? You hook your generator up to a large flywheel....

Food for thought.

[rcavictim]

... and even large banks of capacitors are devices that can store large amounts of energy that if released suddenly and improperly or unexpectedly can cause great property damage or fatalities.

The peak power generated by high voltage capacitive discharge makes a dynamite explosion look like a coal fire. A moderately sized capacitor bank can produce peak energies that exceed those released when firing even the largest military artillery pieces. I am not exaggerating.

What is the best way to rapidly energize a high voltage capacitor? You hook your generator up to a large flywheel....

Food for thought.

Well actually in that case you can even eliminate the capacitor entirely and drop the flywheel into a homopolar generator.

You ain`t kidding about the energies possible with capacitors!  I have some experience in my lab with metal shaping using EMP with triggered spark gap switching of a charged HV cap bank (up to 15 kJ) at 12 kilovolts.  I had the capacitors to make a 150 kJ, 1/3 MV Marx generator.  The forces are as you point out incredible and deserved of great care and respect.  You can easily accelerate a tiny piece of copper like 1/4 inch piece of #14 AWG solid house wire to such velocities that this almost flea weight mass can breach a 14 gauge steel sheet!  Makes a 3000 FPS rifle bullet look like it is standing still.  Cap bank discharges into rail guns can achieve projectile velocities so high that a one ounce projectile could destroy a heavily armoured tank from the explosion of the energy release upon impact merely from the velocity, no explosive charge, same phenomenon that causes a crater like an atomic bomb when a asteroid strikes the earth at 20 miles per second.