General > General Technical Chat
Mess with your minds: A wind powered craft going faster than a tail wind speed.
<< < (121/285) > >>
Kleinstein:
When going at the speed of the wind or faster than the wind, the wheels are driving the propeller, not the other way around.

It is a nice graphics from electrodacus, but for the formulars one has too look at what they actually calculate, and what the symbols stand for:
In the pictures the vehicle is standing still with respect to the picture and the belt like platforms should show the relative movements.

The right side is easy, that is the power generated by generator. Positive power giving power given off.

For the left side it is a bit more complicated: The "belt" velocity is (w-v). The power of the motor is F_m*(w-v). Here a negative sign means the motor takes up power and a positive sign means the motor works as a generator and produces power.
Together with the power from the genrator side this gives the net power. A postive values means excess power available.
So the lable P_out is a bit misleading here. P_net would be more suitable.

The center formula gives the power from the motor, as the generator power is again subtracted.

So the labels there are somewhat mixed up ! And thus the wrong conclusions.

In the upper case both side produce power and thus the high excess power.
In the middle case the motor stands still, and thus no power and thus the 10 W power from the generator.
In the lower case there is still a 6 W of excess power.

So all three cases show net power excess to overcome friction. So all 3 cases are possible.
electrodacus:

--- Quote from: IanB on December 10, 2021, 09:09:22 pm ---
--- Quote from: electrodacus on December 10, 2021, 06:21:43 pm ---Here is the formula for wind power

0.5 * air density * area * (w-v)^3

air density is usually around 1.2kg/m^3
area is the sail area or equivalent (the area facing the wind direction) so direct down wind this is also a constant for a sail
and then is that w (wind speed) minus v (vehicle speed) so there there is max power when vehicle just starts moving super low vehicle speed and decreases significantly as vehicle approaches wind speed and equal with zero when at wind speed.
--- End quote ---

This formula is quite wrong. It is not w (wind speed) minus v (vehicle speed), it is w (wind speed) - g (ground speed), where g is usually zero (unless on a treadmill).

This means the available power from the wind does not depend on the speed of the vehicle, and so it does not matter if the vehicle is travelling at the speed of the wind or faster than it. As long as the vehicle has contact with the ground (wheels with friction), and contact with the air (some kind of sail, fan or propeller), then the vehicle can extract power from the wind/ground system and can go faster then either.

Wheel friction is important here. If the vehicle was skating on ice, then it couldn't go faster than the wind speed, since it would have no grip on the surface between it.

Similarly, it is easy to make a wheeled vehicle run directly into a headwind, and any number of experiments can be built to demonstrate this.

--- End quote ---

Not sure how you came out with that formula.
Also there was never a sail based vehicle demonstrated to exceed wind speed directly down wind (not even close not even in ideal case).
Unless you have an energy storage device you can not exceed wind speed directly down wind.

Directly upwind is a completely different story but there also energy storage is needed else it will be impossible to go up wind at any speed.
All demonstrations including the one I did and showed in this video I just posted uses energy storage plus stick slip hysteresis.  Is clear to see charge and discharge of the energy storage in the slow motion video.
electrodacus:

--- Quote from: Labrat101 on December 10, 2021, 08:15:03 pm ---Wind is powering the propeller not the wheels .
The wind tread mill is not correct .
Sorry you can't emerlate wind with a tread mill

--- End quote ---

The propeller was replaced by the M wheel here not to have any confusion about what a propeller is (just a wheel for traveling trough materials instead of on the material surface).
People think propellers have magical proprieties so I prefer to use wheels as people have less misunderstandings about how those work.
electrodacus:

--- Quote from: Kleinstein on December 10, 2021, 09:15:02 pm ---When going at the speed of the wind or faster than the wind, the wheels are driving the propeller, not the other way around.

--- End quote ---

What powers the wheels ?
When below wind speed wind pushes the vehicle similar to how a sail is pushed.
That power  0.5 * air density * area * (w-v)^3  can be divided in to power to accelerate the vehicle and power for the propeller.
If say that available wind power at some fixed point in time is 100W and say 50W is used to accelerate the vehicle and 50W is sent to propeller by taking energy from the wheel what actually powers the propeller ? The wheel or the wind ?
If air was not a compressible fluid then this wheel to propeller connection will be useless but since air is compressible energy can be stored this way by increasing the pressure differential.
Then above wind speed this stored pressure differential is what pushes the vehicle but this time since this is a limited resource the vehicle will accelerate for a few seconds even minutes and then it will start to slow down as all stored energy will be used.   


--- Quote from: Kleinstein on December 10, 2021, 09:15:02 pm ---It is a nice graphics from electrodacus, but for the formulars one has too look at what they actually calculate, and what the symbols stand for:
In the pictures the vehicle is standing still with respect to the picture and the belt like platforms should show the relative movements.

--- End quote ---

This is a snapshot of the condition at a fixed moment in time same way that Derek made his explanation from the vehicle reference point.
What is showed in my 3 examples is A vehicle lower speed than wind speed, B vehicle at same speed as wind speed and C vehicle at higher speed than wind speed.
And since with wheels only on solid surfaces there is no compressible fluid to store energy the C version will decelerate. Showing that without energy storage it is impossible to accelerate above wind speed



--- Quote from: Kleinstein on December 10, 2021, 09:15:02 pm ---The right side is easy, that is the power generated by generator. Positive power giving power given off.

For the left side it is a bit more complicated: The "belt" velocity is (w-v). The power of the motor is F_m*(w-v). Here a negative sign means the motor takes up power and a positive sign means the motor works as a generator and produces power.
Together with the power from the genrator side this gives the net power. A postive values means excess power available.
So the lable P_out is a bit misleading here. P_net would be more suitable.

The center formula gives the power from the motor, as the generator power is again subtracted.

So the labels there are somewhat mixed up ! And thus the wrong conclusions.

In the upper case both side produce power and thus the high excess power.
In the middle case the motor stands still, and thus no power and thus the 10 W power from the generator.
In the lower case there is still a 6 W of excess power.

So all three cases show net power excess to overcome friction. So all 3 cases are possible.

--- End quote ---

I wanted to make sure is clear Pout includes Pin that is why a Pnet was need to show what the state of the vehicle will be.
Derek used the wrong formula with (v-w) instead of correct (w-v) and only looked at the case C so vehicle speed above wind speed.
The G wheel is a generator only and M wheel is a motor only same as with blackbird where wheel is only a generator and propeller is only for propulsion (they even have a freewheel device installed to make sure power from propeller can not be transferred to wheel).
In case B that is at the limit so in real world you can not get exactly zero speed but all power from generator is needed at the motor else vehicle will move backwards (decelerate if any power is generated at G wheel and not all of it is put in the M wheel).
fourfathom:

--- Quote from: electrodacus on December 10, 2021, 10:20:52 pm ---Also there was never a sail based vehicle demonstrated to exceed wind speed directly down wind (not even close not even in ideal case).
--- End quote ---
True.  I don't think that a sailboat can beat a balloon to a goal directly downwind -- even if the boat jibes.


--- Quote from: electrodacus on December 10, 2021, 10:20:52 pm ---Unless you have an energy storage device you can not exceed wind speed directly down wind.
--- End quote ---
Using a sail.  But a propeller is not a sail, and a boat on the water is not a wheeled vehicle on the land.
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod