re:
"That said the repressed evil genius racecar engineer in me always
wanted to try putting a bigger flywheel in a race car with its own
separate clutch, that could be revved up while the engine is normally
slowing under braking and then engaged when accellerating out of coners,
it would of course be situated horizontally and low in the car, to lower
center of gravity and provide a gyro stabilizing effect in corners. "
You DEFINITELY would not want such an arrangement. There is a force
called "gyroscopic precession"
that produces a counter-effect at 90deg in the direction of rotation of
the mass. Depending on how the
gyro was mounted and which direction it was rotating, you would get some
really weird and likely not
beneficial moments. For instance, if the gyro was mounted fixed about
its axis and rotating counter-
clockwise ("anti-clockwise" for the cricket testers), when turning left
(leaning to the right) you'd get
an up force at the rear wheels--which wouldn't be very beneficial--and
when turning right the gyro would
want to lift the front wheels (not very helpful, either). You could
probably harness this effect with some
complicated mechanical device, but it probably wouldn't be worth the
weight and complexity.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precession
(man, Wikipedia has some good stuff )
bs
Greg Lemon wrote:
> Doesn't the lightened flywheel help accelleration more than you might
> think at first blush because although the flywheel's weight isn't very
> significant in relation to that of the whole car, you get a multiplier
> effect beacause of the gearing, moreso in the lower gears (engine is
> spinning faster than the wheels)?
>
> That said the repressed evil genius racecar engineer in me always
> wanted to try putting a bigger flywheel in a race car with its own
> separate clutch, that could be revved up while the engine is normally
> slowing under braking and then engaged when accellerating out of
> coners, it would of course be situated horizontally and low in the
> car, to lower center of gravity and provide a gyro stabilizing effect
> in corners.
>
> Greg Lemon
> 54 BN1
> Your messages not reaching the list?
> Check out http://www.team.net/posting.html
>
***************************************************************
Bob Spidell San Jose, CA bspidell@comcast.net
'67 Austin-Healey 3000 '56 Austin-Healey 100M
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