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Listeroid Engines / Re: How to reduce a twin's ground pounding, house shaking antics???
« on: June 13, 2009, 04:33:25 AM »
PS - You may also want to study up on gyroscopic forces if you have not already done so. When you try to move a flywheel from its spin axis, it resists (creates forces) that are perpendicular to the distrurbing force...not what most folks would initially expect.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/gyroscope1.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyroscope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession
Just to pitch in something from a slightly different angle of approach, one bunch of engineers who have to deal with precession and crankshafts a lot is aircraft propeller engineers. Thrust and centripetal loads are common and comparatively obvious, but they also speak of 'p-factor' which is the force the propeller applies to its bearings when the aircraft pitches.
While the listeroid flywheel turns a lot slower, it's also very massive. There's a lot of energy stored in that wheel, and I can certainly postulate excitement occurring if the mounting allowed change of axial direction for the flywheel/crankshaft combination.
Frankly, I think the Chinese single-flywheel engines are probably at a greater risk of this than an 'oid as long as the two sides of the twin listeroid are made as similar as possible. A single listeroid is probably nearly immune.