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Post by Enderminion on Feb 19, 2017 16:18:03 GMT
wouldn't a compuslator or whatever spin your ship whenever you used it?
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 19, 2017 16:21:34 GMT
wouldn't a compuslator or whatever spin your ship whenever you used it? Like with Turbomachinery, have a second set spinning in the opposite direction.
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Post by argonbalt on Feb 19, 2017 23:54:23 GMT
Wait so roughly and simplistically how does this compulsator quickly transfer a huge charge from spinning Ke to El, with capacitors you have a huge potential difference in power stored in an electrical fluid, so a sudden dumping of power can be achieved via switching(which as we should all know by now is one of the large issues with traditional capacitor banks powering electrical weaponry). How does a compulsator:
1) Quickly release the energy required? Is it basically hooked up to a motor and acts as a super charged alternator?
2) With two spinning plates counter acting any spin, are the plates also holding charges such that total joules stored is/2 across both plates and released? Or is the second just a counter wheel to neutralise the Newtonian effects of the first?
3) If both plates hold half(ves) of the charge is the funtion of one plate to hold the positive and the second to charge the negative, then when needed it discharges?
4) does the compulsator use some secondary charging method like electrostatic effects to transfer it's kinetic energy into chemical potential?
It just strike me as more arduous method of energy transfer after build up with so many (pun intended) moving parts compared to traditional capacitors.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 20, 2017 1:53:49 GMT
having the lest transfers of types of energy is the best
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Post by newageofpower on Feb 20, 2017 1:56:18 GMT
Most Compulsator designs indeed discharge power similarly to an flywheel; one of the main differences is the compulsator's electromechanical windings are configured for minimum inductance and high pulsed power rather than steady/stable output.
You would require a bank of them to achieve ludicrous maximum peak power, but total energy draw is very low compared to the high energy storage per weight of an compulsator. You would divide the bank of power supplies into clockwise and counterclockwise wheels to cancel out torque, obviously.
Mechanical <-> Electrical power conversion can be extremely efficient and quick; the main advantage is that kinetic energy storage is easily multiple orders of magnitude less massive compared to traditional capacitors.
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Post by lieste on Feb 20, 2017 2:20:54 GMT
For modest power requirements yes, orders of magnitude are possible...
If you want high power ratings you need *much* higher storage energy with correspondingly high storage mass and complexity. The result is a small potential improvement in mass efficiency over current capacitor installations, far below an order of magnitude though, and probably in the region of a 2 fold improvement at a reasonable expectation.
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Post by Enderminion on Feb 20, 2017 3:43:40 GMT
what do all these capacitors and compuslator compare to good old Li-ion batteries?
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 20, 2017 5:12:11 GMT
Looking at Ragone charts, nothing seems to beat capacitors for what a railgun needs.
-break- neat stuff I found:
The naval research lab had a small railgun the ran at 11kv and discharged close to 1.3MA... For a total output of 5Mw over 0.008 seconds to get a 1kg projectile to 1.7km/s. The reported capacitive energy store was 11Mj, KE output was 1.44Mj. Weight estimates for the capacitor bank are 10,000 Kg.
A 1Mw discharge in a similar timeframe from a compulsator required an 11,000 Kg machine. This was done by University of TX under a DARPA contract.
So, it looks like capacitors may be 5x more mass efficient. We haven't even touched on "refill" time, but a compulsator would be capable of several shots in a row followed by a long dwell, versus a consistent fire/dwell for capacitors.
Also interesting: Estimates place ship power generation requirements at 20-30 MW for even a 32 MJ railgun, in order to fire at its maximum projected rate of 6-10 times per minute.
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Post by bdcarrillo on Feb 20, 2017 5:14:10 GMT
what do all these capacitors and compuslator compare to good old Li-ion batteries? They'd explode.
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