3 ms·
That probably was a solid wheel, right? Modern flywheels are usually made of carbon or glass fiber and have much simpler failure modes. They just break if anyth
by orbital-decay 8y ago
That probably was a solid wheel, right? Modern flywheels are usually made of carbon or glass fiber and have much simpler failure modes. They just break if anything goes wrong, not rolling anywhere.
- Johnny555 8y agoThey just break if anything goes wrong Where break means explode, hopefully contained by the housing.
- orbital-decay 8y agoYeah, a high velocity chunk of fiber can be pretty nasty too. Still, it's much easier to contain compared to a huge metal wheel, because they literally disintegrate on failure when saturated.
- carapace 8y agoGoes right to turbulent flow, as opposed to the laminar flow of metal in/as the wheel. Nice.
- e12e 8y agoTechnically gas is "soft" but doesn't seem that way when powder explodes. It doesn't seem trivial to contain this energy - the vessel would still explode, given enough energy in the wheel? Certainly safer than launching a giant death Frisbee... But lots of energy is still lots of energy. I guess it's a bit machine gun bullet vs hand grenade - about equal energy - but the grenade will just blow up a room while the bullet will go through walls and lodge in an engine block.
- ams6110 8y agoIt's the sudden release of energy that matters. Not the composition of the flywheel.
- ars 8y ago> They just break if anything goes wrong, not rolling anywhere. I saw a video of a flywheel being deliberately destruction tested. "just break" is putting it mildly - it looked like an explosion, and left white-hot pieces of the flywheel behind.
- lambdadmitry 8y agoDo you have a link by chance?