4 ms·
The “if” in “if it all comes out” is the key here. Nobody’s disputing that releasing all that energy at once is catastrophic. The question is, how hard is it to
by jdlshore 6y ago
The “if” in “if it all comes out” is the key here. Nobody’s disputing that releasing all that energy at once is catastrophic. The question is, how hard is it to prevent it from releasing all at once?
My understanding is that flywheels are far more dangerous in this respect, and require heavy containment vessels to mitigate the risk. That heavy containment is part of what makes flywheels impractical.
But that’s just the impression I have. I haven’t studied it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Turing_Machine 6y agoI'm not an expert, either, but I've seen mentions of "frangible" flywheel materials that basically turn into a powder when they fail, so you get a housing full of what one article described as "red-hot sand".
- Nextgrid 6y agoI find it hard to believe such a thing is possible. You'd want a material that is both strong enough to stay in one piece despite the centrifugal force when it is spinning in normal operation, but as soon as it fails you'd want all of it to disintegrate into powder (instead of in several chunks, which could make it more dangerous - essentially a fragmentation grenade). You'd want a material that is solid but has a specific trigger that immediately causes it to break entirely and propagate said trigger onwards. Maybe something like a Prince Rupert's drop (a bit of glass which is super strong, but breaking its tail - the weak spot - causes the entire thing to disintegrate due to internal forces)?
- Turing_Machine 6y agoYes. Another example might be the safety glass used in automobile windshields. It's pretty tough, but when it does shatter, it doesn't produce the dagger-like shards of regular glass. The key would be having no individual fragment with both the momentum and the "pointiness" to penetrate the enclosure.