Cant get it out of my head

I have always been very interested in fly wheels and there ability to store kinetic energy. I once heard of an idea in Europe for silent buses, these would have a huge fly wheel that spun up as it went down hilll and used that energy to go up. Where there wasnt enough downs to go up they had this idea of wind up stations that the bus would stop for a minute or two. Now if you had this in a boat yacht keel, I mean a boat of 50 foot with a keel large enought to accomodate a fly wheel of say 10 feet. This would be the balast as well as a power source. This could be wound up with a constant speed engine and could give silent power for a while.
But heres the scary bit, what effect would this huge giroscope have on stability of the boat in rough seas?

 

It would eliminate any roll...
And impose huge forces on the hull...
Try to move a bicycle wheel around while it spins.

 

Jack and Raggi,
I have thought of the same, the "spinning bicycle wheel" inside a keel to use its rightening moment. I discarded the idea because the technique does not only give lateral moment, in a dynamic world it also gives longitudinal moment.

I wonder how that would feel, accelerating pitch one way and decellerating it the other. Not what we want in rough seas. Can it be dealt with somehow? I couldn't find a solution.

Interesting idea, any more input?

Mikey

 

The antique thing: http://users.pandora.be/delijntjes/gyrobus.htm
The new thing: http://www.delta.tudelft.nl/archief/j35/1668
Words to use for a query on internet:
company: Centre for concepts in mechatronics (CCM) from Nuenen, Holland
vehicle: Phileas-bus; www.phileas.nl; http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phileas_(OV)
power: 200kW electro magnetic fly wheel
promovendus: South Afrikan Robert Holm of the section electrical power processing (EWI)

Good luck guys!

 

Mmmm lets not go down the bus road too much, (no pun intended) the idea is to harness the gyroscpic inertia that can be obtained. Its not like we are removing the keel instead of ,--its more an as well as. It would appear that the rolling movement experienced by a vessel at sea would be the type of motion that the Gyroscopic inertia would resist against. The up and down motion of the bow to attack large waves would be un-affected. Thats the whole point of Gyroscopes on stabalizers, only you would be sitting in a gyroscope. It would be a motion resistant boat??

 

Don't think so. It's more like a righting moment extra. The thing I was pointing at, is the fly wheel used is a mechanic accu to store electric energy. Ergo, you need a high tech installation to get pretty efficient rates.
How much energy would you need at what moment? When you have this figured out you can quantify forces and volumes. (just to know what we are talking about)

 

Well Im not going to build this of course, its just an idea, I was checking to see if I needed to see a sphyciatrist. Actually it would be of multiple use, ie, ballast, energy store, stabalizer. The bearings of course would need to be the most friction-less possible and I thought that hydraulics could be used to spin it up from rest as the movement would be from zero. Or reversable DC current,-- say magnets in the rotor that could spin it up and take the energy out again at the end of the day as required. It would'nt need to be used if it was calm. I think that it wouldnt need to be absalutely efficient to be viable as its multy use would make it a usefull proposition. Force and volumes??? EErrr any body else?

 

Just wondering,

From what I know about gyroscopes, when you apply a force to the gyro, it exits 90 degrees in the direction of rotation. So with a gyro spinning in the vertical plane mounted transversely (I don't know what the best setup would be this is just for visualizing), would not any rolling force translate into an up or down motion and conversely would not any pitching motion cause a side to side motion.

Of course if you mounted it still spinning in the vertical plane but with the longitudinal axis, a rolling motion would cause a yawing motion and a pitching motion would cause a front or backwards motion.

 

I think if you have a substantial righting moment then you will also have a substantial "unwanted" moment. It the wheel spins around a transverse axis you would have a course change as a result of a righting moment. I think that would be very uncontrollable. Or if you change the course you suddenly heel! At uni the prof put a battery powered flywheel into a suitcase and asked a student to move the suitcase from one table to the other. It was one of the most funny lessons and the suitcase ended up sitting on one corner at an odd angle on top of the other table.