Flywheel Powered Plane

aircraft can be powered by storing energy in many different forms whether it be liquid fuel for a jet or piston engine or in a battery for powering an electric motor but what about flywheel energy storage fly rules can be used to store huge amounts of energy by rotating a mass of really high rpm but is this enough to fly a plane let's build a flywheel and find out this video is sponsored by blinkers more on them later now you might be able to notice that I'm actually CNC cutting carbon fiber underneath that water but on the fly was meant to be heavy well yes and no you see the energy stored in a flywheel is essentially kinetic energy which is the energy of a mass moving at a given speed the equation for this flywheel energy is 1/2 times the rotational inertia times the angular velocity squared the rotational inertia is related to the mass of the flywheel and how far that mass is away from the rotational axle and the angular velocity is how fast the wheel is spinning now we can increase energy stored by increasing both of these values however because the velocity is squared we're much better off spinning the flywheel faster by doubling the inertia we will double the energy but by doubling the velocity we will quadruple the energy and as we need to keep the weight as low as possible whilst keeping the energy storage high we need to have a lightweight flywheel that will spin at really high rpm and we want as much of that flywheel mass to be as far from the axle as possible hence the lightweight carbon-fiber hub and aluminium outer ring i've been balanced it as best as I could and assembled it with a belt and pulley system resulting in a propeller to flyable ratio of 16 to 1 so the fly walken spin really fast while keeping the propeller rpm relatively low the rotational from the police is then transferred through these bevel gears to spin the propeller at the front in fact i'm able to spin the propeller with my finger at about 2 revolutions per second which is about 2,000 RPM at the flywheel i'd then attach the tail boom with the rudder and elevator to control it in flight and both a launch ram which has a motor to spin up the flywheel it sounds like a at low RPM but as it gets faster it starts to sound really rough which at the time was a little confusing as I had balanced the flywheel and police better than I usually balance my drone propellers which spin a far higher rpm but I did notice this o-ring expanding and shaking which I think is causing most of the noise plus I think this also caused the belts to vibrate at high rpm to at least it was quite a bit of energy stored in the flywheel allowing it to spin for quite a while I still had the same foam wind from my old compressed air powered plane and stripped all the tape from the surface which managed to save about 40 grams and was the perfect size for this plane - also I was concerned about the belt vibrations at high rpm so printed this ridiculous looking 40 centimeter diameter three bladed propeller to make use of the low rpm output right so I've come out on a nice calm morning there's virtually no wind the Sun is just about to come through the clouds and we're gonna give this thing a test ok here we go got a spin up slowed start just get the motor going not quite fast enough I think it just needs some weight on the actual plane to keep it attached to the rubber o-ring to what [Music] so that wasn't great was it hit the ground I think I need to get prints of new gears as well seem to have taken out all the teeth on that bevel gear I think the belts look ok just that one gear that I need to reprint reprinting the bevel gears took about an hour and a half so I decided to test the launch ramp a few times whilst I waited and got mixed results alright so I've come back about two hours later I've repaired all the 3d printed gears and I really don't wanna risk breaking them again because how long it takes to reprint them and refit them so instead of risking the gears this time I'm going to risk myself I'm going to handle it [Music] [Applause] there's going to be a lot harder than I first imagined another two hours later I went back to a 15 inch carbon-fiber propeller and decided to test from the launch ramp again but it was still very far from performing a successful flight a tested a couple more times from a high launch position and even removed one of the pulley stages to increase the RPM and the propeller relative to the fly world and even after removing all of the electronics to reduce the weight further it still wasn't flying so I decided to cut my losses I needed to see a plane fly using just the energy stored in a flywheel sometimes the simplest ideas work the best and I think I found a solution to my flywheel madness this toy uses the rotational energy of the propeller and its outer ring to continue rotating after I apply force to destroy creating a thrust force lifting up into the air but what I love most about these toys is a super simple yet effective release mechanism here's a 3d printed version I built to attach to a brushless drone motor the way it works is these angled parts interlock meaning the propeller is held down if it's been accelerated by the motor then once the motor decelerates it unlocks and shoots into the sky but is it enough to power a plane well moving ahead with the simple solution I needed a simple plane so I built this very basic glider using balsa wood and foam board and attached a bearing block to the front which will allow the propeller to freely rotate [Applause] it's so satisfying seeing something so simple work so well also it's really easy to modify the weight diameter and pictured the propeller for different flight performance though don't try to save too much weight on the blades which hold it all together unless you want to fly in hulu this release mechanism works really well for being so simple it just requires the motor to decelerate and let the plane soar into the sky I will be putting the files to this flywheel plane up on Thingiverse if you want to build your own however make sure to use a radio control to spin up the motor and stand at a safe distance and be careful of any flying shrapnel speaking of keeping things simple if you're like me and find it difficult to sit down and read books to learn new things especially when the video like this pops up in your youtube subscription feed then the sponsor of this video will be of interest to you blink is an app for those of you interested in learning from books but just don't have the time they take key insights from over 3,000 non-fiction bestsellers in over twenty seven categories as you may know from my youtube videos I make projects relating to all sorts of areas of engineering and I tend to read very lightly into each topic just to get a general understanding so that I can make a video like this for you guys to watch and this is exactly what Blinky's does but for books I highly recommend checking out the Wright brothers book as it covers the history of the brothers whilst they pioneered new inventions in aviation and to summarize such an interesting historical story in just 15 minutes it's really enjoyable another great one is rocket men which is all about the space race and Apollo missions to the moon and both these books can be listened to in just 30 minutes and being 15 minutes each they're perfect to enjoy whilst sipping on a cup of tea so the first 100 people that sign up via blink is calm forward-slash Tom Stanton will get a 7-day unlimited access free trial and you will also get 25% off a four-year membership this means that you can read a book every day for the next week in what other world does that exist I want to thanks very much for watching if you enjoyed this video be good if you can leave a thumbs up down below if you're new to my channel and want to see other crazy projects similar to this please click subscribe down below and a huge use thanks to all of my supporters over on patreon comm you guys make these videos possible and I honestly can do it without you so thanks once again thanks for us again for watching and I'll see you in the next video goodbye

Channel: Tom Stanton

Views: 2,224,530

Rating: 4.8349171 out of 5

Keywords: flywheel, engineering, physics, wheel, aircraft, plane, airplane, carbon fibre, machining, radio control, energy, energy storage, kinetic storage, kinetic energy, lathe, CNC, how flywheel works, what is flywheel, aerospace, DIY, homemade, How to, science, learn, education, learn physics, 3D print, 3D printed, aluminium, propeller, wing, lift, thrust, drag

Id: Gp0Zi7U--30

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 11 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/_Trump_Lost_LOL_]

Adam Savage video below showing what you’re talking about.

“The Power In These Flywheels Scares The Pants Off Me" | Savage Builds

[u/driverofracecars]

In the early-ish days of hybrid vehicle technology, Porsche had a hybrid race car that used a flywheel to store energy rather than typical batteries. Pretty neat stuff.

[u/RiPont]

Watching him spin up that flywheel without safety glasses had me seriously cringing.

Stored energy is dangerous, dudes!

Having various bits of 3D-printed plastic and drive belts around an untested flywheel means various bits that can fly off in random directions, including after the whole thing has jumped off the rig.

[u/Fus_Roh_Potato]

they call it a fly wheel but it doesn't fly very well

[u/BigidyBam]

At first I thought it was going to be a real plane. Then I was like, okay whatever smaller plane. Then he pulled out that dinky thing at then end wtf? Only thing left would have been a paper plane.

[u/ThisIsntGoldWorthy]

I like this guys channel and I'm always struck by the awesome stuff he builds with a lot of skill, but then he does stupid shit like not wear safety glasses.

[u/3zats]

I'm no expert but it seemed like the CoG was too far forward.

The center of gravity is supposed to be in front of the wing, but not by very much. Too far forward and the nose will drop at low speed because you don't have enough control authority from the elevator.

On something like this the flywheel is going to be extremely heavy compared to everything else so its placement is vital. Ideally you would have the ability to adjust either it or the wing fore and aft to find where the plane is most stable.

[u/Unlucky-Fox-7211]

sick!!