DeltaV wrote:from a geometric viewpoint the spiral ribbon configuration does not seem suited for continuous rotary motion (though it could work for static torque).
A rotary motor might be doable with an alternate coil geometry, consisting of a disk of sheet copper with one radial cutout (C-shaped) for each turn, like a Bitter coil but with no twist/overlap (outside jumpers to connect the flat coil turns). The dielectric rotors would look something like a Tesla turbine rotor, with one coil turn filling each gap (small clearances to avoid friction). Since alternate dielectric layers would have opposite rotations, some sort of gear mechanism would be needed to combine the outputs. One thing to consider is, can the dielectric materials take the torque of a motor giving useful output power?
I have no doubt that someone could come up with a scheme to reorient the conductors and hook-up some type of planetary gears to the feeble dielectrics in my flux capacitor; but that all seems too unnecessarily complicated to me. My flux capacitor design is the simplest idea I could come up with in order to determine if the Woodward-effect even exists at all. I’m not cutting-down Woodward’s flux capacitor design (in fact I think it’s a brilliant concept). But my design has no piezoelectrics, load cells or complicated timing schemes like Woodward’s does. It’s just dirt simple, cheaper and a heck of a lot easier to fabricate.
DeltaV wrote:
I've only skimmed through Woodward's book/papers (over a year ago) and I'm too sleep-deprived right now to remember flux capacitor/M-E drive details
Woodward’s ‘flux capacitor’ paper predicts that mass fluctuations may occur in the dielectrics of capacitors subjected to large, rapid voltage fluctuations. Capacitors store energy in dielectric core lattice stresses as they are polarized. Now, as the ions in the lattice are accelerated by the changing external electric field they are also subjected to a changing external magnetic field oriented at right angles to the electric field thus resulting in the commonly known Lorentz force acting on the ions at right angles to both the electric and magnetic fields. Some people call this the right hand rule for motors. Hold out your right hand and orient your thumb, index finger and middle finger at right angles to each other. If you point your index finger in the direction of the magnetic field and your middle finger in the direction of the electric field then your thumb will be pointing in the direction of the Lorentz force acting on the ion as it is accelerated in the direction of the electric field. Now here’s the neat part, if you reverse the directions of the electric and magnetic fields then the direction of the Lorentz force acting on the ion will not change. The Lorentz force acting on the ions will always be in the same direction. I believe this phenomenon is called force rectification, and it is critical to the operation of any flux capacitor design. The ions will be Lorentz stressed in the same direction twice every AC cycle and the lattice stresses will restore the ions back to their unstressed positions between each Lorentz stress. If Woodward’s mass fluctuations do indeed occur then the idea here is to provide a Lorentz PUSH on the ions when they’re heavy and let the lattice-stresses PULL on them when they’re light. If such behavior can be confirmed then it would obviously be a major break-through with profound implications.
Woodward effect mass fluctuations should be proportional to the time rate of change of the instantaneous power delivered to the capacitor dielectric. What this means to flux capacitor design is the higher the voltage and the higher the frequency then the greater the chance that mass fluctuations can be detected. A simple high voltage and high frequency design is what my flux capacitor design is all about, especially more so if you can resonate it like a Tesla coil.
But, to quote Woodward himself: “Note that the assumption that all of the power delivered to the capacitors ends up as a proper energy density fluctuation is an optimistic, indeed, perhaps wildly optimistic, assumption. Nonetheless, it is arguably a reasonable place to start.” I agree with him, it’s a good place to start.
~Randy
