I've been working on understanding the mechanics of the MEGA Drive. I see several engineering issues regarding the design and setup.1. The SM-111, 19mm x 2mm disks are rated to operate at about 25W maximum power. In the MEGA Drive application, they operate at resonance up to 200+ Volts. These disks have a resonant resistance < 2 Ohms per the MFGR.P = V2/R = 20,000 WSo in the application, the D.U.T. is being driven to 1000x its rated power. Hmm... I wonder why they don't last long.2. In the video, Prof. Woodward shows a 1-Line diagram for the setup. The On/Off relay is ahead of the power amplifier, and a step-up transformer of all things is connected directly to the D.U.T. A transformer has a very high leakage inductance and a high impedance compared to the D.U.T. I would not be surprised if the big Transients at Turn-on and Turn-off are simply the flyback energy from the leakage inductance dumping the energy into the D.U.T.3. In the PZT stack they put 2 thinner disks of the same SM-111 material to be used as an accelerometer, but I don't see how it actually measures acceleration. What I think it measures is the pressure exerted on those disks. In that regard, if the PZT stack is supposed to drive the mass variation into resonance to get thrust, doesn't the addition of the 2 extra disks which absorb those fluctuations, reduce the mass fluctuations and the thrust? I would think so. In addition, as the device heats up, the pressure on those disks increases and so they will inherently have a thermally drifting DC offset.I have applied by QG model and have determined that overall, the MEGA Drive idea is a good one and it should work. However, I find the engineering of the drive could use some improvement. Therefore, I'm working on building a couple of thrusters of my own using bigger PZT disks that can handle 3X more power. Then I will design a optimized driving circuit and put everything, including the batteries in one faraday cage box. Hopefully, this will scale the thrust several orders of magnitude and get the measurements out of the mud.
Regarding stealing entropy, or energy from the overall expansion of the universe - thrust or travel has to be in a specific direction, and so if you're stealing, then technically you're stealing from the overall universe with respect to a particular axis of it.Couldn't it be possible that you're still increasing the overall entropy of the universe in the remaining axes, other than the one you've stolen from?Anyone?
Quote from: WarpTech on 11/15/2017 04:06 pmI've been working on understanding the mechanics of the MEGA Drive. I see several engineering issues regarding the design and setup.1. The SM-111, 19mm x 2mm disks are rated to operate at about 25W maximum power. In the MEGA Drive application, they operate at resonance up to 200+ Volts. These disks have a resonant resistance < 2 Ohms per the MFGR.P = V2/R = 20,000 WSo in the application, the D.U.T. is being driven to 1000x its rated power. Hmm... I wonder why they don't last long.2. In the video, Prof. Woodward shows a 1-Line diagram for the setup. The On/Off relay is ahead of the power amplifier, and a step-up transformer of all things is connected directly to the D.U.T. A transformer has a very high leakage inductance and a high impedance compared to the D.U.T. I would not be surprised if the big Transients at Turn-on and Turn-off are simply the flyback energy from the leakage inductance dumping the energy into the D.U.T.3. In the PZT stack they put 2 thinner disks of the same SM-111 material to be used as an accelerometer, but I don't see how it actually measures acceleration. What I think it measures is the pressure exerted on those disks. In that regard, if the PZT stack is supposed to drive the mass variation into resonance to get thrust, doesn't the addition of the 2 extra disks which absorb those fluctuations, reduce the mass fluctuations and the thrust? I would think so. In addition, as the device heats up, the pressure on those disks increases and so they will inherently have a thermally drifting DC offset.I have applied by QG model and have determined that overall, the MEGA Drive idea is a good one and it should work. However, I find the engineering of the drive could use some improvement. Therefore, I'm working on building a couple of thrusters of my own using bigger PZT disks that can handle 3X more power. Then I will design a optimized driving circuit and put everything, including the batteries in one faraday cage box. Hopefully, this will scale the thrust several orders of magnitude and get the measurements out of the mud.I've asked before and generally I'm ignored but the question is if there are fundamentally better ways to manipulate the energy density to produce the MACH effect and are they investigating that question or are they just planning on taking PZT stacks to the limits?
Quote from: Bob012345 on 11/15/2017 05:55 pmQuote from: WarpTech on 11/15/2017 04:06 pmI've been working on understanding the mechanics of the MEGA Drive. I see several engineering issues regarding the design and setup.1. The SM-111, 19mm x 2mm disks are rated to operate at about 25W maximum power. In the MEGA Drive application, they operate at resonance up to 200+ Volts. These disks have a resonant resistance < 2 Ohms per the MFGR.P = V2/R = 20,000 WSo in the application, the D.U.T. is being driven to 1000x its rated power. Hmm... I wonder why they don't last long.2. In the video, Prof. Woodward shows a 1-Line diagram for the setup. The On/Off relay is ahead of the power amplifier, and a step-up transformer of all things is connected directly to the D.U.T. A transformer has a very high leakage inductance and a high impedance compared to the D.U.T. I would not be surprised if the big Transients at Turn-on and Turn-off are simply the flyback energy from the leakage inductance dumping the energy into the D.U.T.3. In the PZT stack they put 2 thinner disks of the same SM-111 material to be used as an accelerometer, but I don't see how it actually measures acceleration. What I think it measures is the pressure exerted on those disks. In that regard, if the PZT stack is supposed to drive the mass variation into resonance to get thrust, doesn't the addition of the 2 extra disks which absorb those fluctuations, reduce the mass fluctuations and the thrust? I would think so. In addition, as the device heats up, the pressure on those disks increases and so they will inherently have a thermally drifting DC offset.I have applied by QG model and have determined that overall, the MEGA Drive idea is a good one and it should work. However, I find the engineering of the drive could use some improvement. Therefore, I'm working on building a couple of thrusters of my own using bigger PZT disks that can handle 3X more power. Then I will design a optimized driving circuit and put everything, including the batteries in one faraday cage box. Hopefully, this will scale the thrust several orders of magnitude and get the measurements out of the mud.I've asked before and generally I'm ignored but the question is if there are fundamentally better ways to manipulate the energy density to produce the MACH effect and are they investigating that question or are they just planning on taking PZT stacks to the limits?I don't know everything others are working on, only that progress has been too slow for my liking. I'm personally working on understanding the fundamentals in terms of my own QG model, so I can engineer a MEGA Drive to get the thrust out of the mud. In that regard, the issues I raised above are where I'm currently at. It's a work in progress. I should probably have some results sometime after the holidays. My metal work is being done by a machinist friend of mine, and I hope to get the machined parts back sometime in the next 2 to 3 weeks. Then I can assemble and start testing my driver circuit.
Great! I encourage you to think of different ways energy can be manipulated as it is in the PZT stacks. Maybe you'll find some conduit that's easier, cheaper and more powerful.
Quote from: sanman on 11/15/2017 02:53 pmRegarding stealing entropy, or energy from the overall expansion of the universe - thrust or travel has to be in a specific direction, and so if you're stealing, then technically you're stealing from the overall universe with respect to a particular axis of it.Couldn't it be possible that you're still increasing the overall entropy of the universe in the remaining axes, other than the one you've stolen from?Anyone?Who says it has to be in any specific direction? My take is that it's arbitrary, that the MACH effect itself is directionless and has to do with the distant universe and what you do with mass fluctuations, i.e. accelerate, is up to you. I think you can apply the mass fluctuations, which are a scalar not vector quantity, in any desired direction.
Quote from: Bob012345 on 11/15/2017 06:12 pmGreat! I encourage you to think of different ways energy can be manipulated as it is in the PZT stacks. Maybe you'll find some conduit that's easier, cheaper and more powerful.This is what I have... See Milonni, The Quantum Vacuum. Sec. 5.4 for the detailed Math.
Quote from: Bob012345 on 11/15/2017 05:58 pmQuote from: sanman on 11/15/2017 02:53 pmRegarding stealing entropy, or energy from the overall expansion of the universe - thrust or travel has to be in a specific direction, and so if you're stealing, then technically you're stealing from the overall universe with respect to a particular axis of it.Couldn't it be possible that you're still increasing the overall entropy of the universe in the remaining axes, other than the one you've stolen from?Anyone?Who says it has to be in any specific direction? My take is that it's arbitrary, that the MACH effect itself is directionless and has to do with the distant universe and what you do with mass fluctuations, i.e. accelerate, is up to you. I think you can apply the mass fluctuations, which are a scalar not vector quantity, in any desired direction.Apologies, perhaps I wasn't clear - I meant that each linear oscillation is occurring in a specific axial direction, and therefore if some kind of energy or entropy theft is occurring at the expense of the rest of the universe, then each little interaction with the rest of the universe is happening in a specific axial direction. Do you agree with that much?
I think so with the caveat that one can change what direction one wants arbitrarily.
Version 3 of the asymmetric shaker. The arduino board is not capable of providing enough power for the shaker so I had to use a very small 3W amplifier. Finally I am getting useful data. I was able to find a frequency that shows similar "thrust" results as a mach effect thruster. I have included a simple 1 second moving average to show how a vibrating device can return false positive thrust results on torsional pendulum.
It's not like a Mach Effect device trace. The baseline does not return to the same level after the drive period. I believe you are seeing stiction or play in your bearings or another part of the assembly.
Can you share more data please?Frequency of the oscillation/shaker.Snapshot of the input signal voltage and current at the driving frequency.Mass at each end.Composition of the masses at each end?Pulse width modulation?Duty cycle?Did you determine the resonant frequency of the shaker with the given masses?