From: Blair.Haworth@launchpad.unc.edu (Blair Haworth)
Subject: A gripe, and Re: Flywheel batteries...
Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 1992 16:52:10 GMT

In article <1992Dec23.214551.1004@cmkrnl.com> jeh@cmkrnl.com writes:
>In article <1992Dec23.081415.4647@adobe.com>, pngai@adobe.com (Phil Ngai)
> writes:
>> I repeat my offer to all the liberal arts majors participating in this
>> discussion. [...]
>
>Yep, he was a liberal arts major.  
[...]

Speaking as a doctoral candidate in history with a history of science
Masters' and an undergraduate minor of sorts in physics, I'd appreciate it
if you'd put a sock on all this "liberal arts majors" crap.  Just because
a lot of my colleagues choose to be jumped-up peasants instead of
genuinely liberally educated individuals doesn't mean I have to sit still
for being tarred with that brush.  Please knock it off before I have to
comment on the rather faulty communications skills of a lot of the
science/engineering/computer-oriented posters, or their seeming reluctance
to use reference works beyond the CRC (that'll get you a long way,
though), or their occasionally quaint approach to the history of their own
fields.  There's plenty of cloddishness on both sides, and room for
everyone to learn something.  

Sorry for the rant, on with the thread...  

The progress of this (interminable) thread has done a lot to dull my
initial optimism about the applicability of flywheel energy storage to
automobiles. I think the real grief will come from bearing design, and
from technologicical overreach in going directly for automotive
application.  Why not start with a static device, like a peak-load
storage or a backup power source, where you don't have to worry about
accelerations and you can put it in a pit, just in case?

I'm not totally convinced by the energy-is-conserved-and-that's-that
crowd, although I think containment will be daunting.  I suspect though,
that at least a partial solution exists today, in production-line
automotive technology, in several thousand examples.  Consider the M-1
tank: it carries its forty rounds of main-gun ammo in an armored
compartment designed to vent upward in the event of an explosion: the
rules say energy is conserved, they don't say which direction it has to be
conserved in.  The total energetic content is typically about (40 x 10kg=)
400kg of propellants and very roughly, assuming half the warload is
HEAT-MP, (20 x 10kg x 15% explosive filling by weight=) 30kg explosive
(numbers from _Jane's_ via memory).  Do these sound like familiar numbers? 
Yes, we're talking about a 60-70 ton tank, here, but keep in mind that
we're talking about what happens to be one of the most thinly-armored
parts of the tank.  It would also be foolish to ignore the, ah, distinctly
directional character of flywheel failure, but consider that the same tank
is designed to defeat just that sort of attack (shaped-charge warheads). 
Both these features worked pretty well in combat; their descendants might
(for all we know) work on the road.  I won't bet the rent money, and of
course, the relevant technology is heavily classified, but it is there. 

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