Quote from: Rodal on 09/07/2017 09:19 pmQuote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/07/2017 09:12 pm...Thank you for the contact information. It is too far away for me to visit Cal State, though.Besides the bearing, the hysteresis of the beam elastic bending may play a role too. I need to think hard to find a way to remove all those effects.If you are discussing stress-strain hysteresis in the aluminum beam, the beam is made of aerospace aluminum grade, it is trivial to calculate that the strains in the beam are infinitesimal and therefore hysteresis of the beam is non-existent, since the strains in the beam are orders of magnitude below the yield strain. Aerospace engineers reading this that are familiar with fatigue calculations and elastic-plastic deformations in metals will realize this at once.Thanks. The fact that the masses vibrate quickly and intensely worries me. There are just too many places this can cause problems. I need to think and read when I get some more time.
Quote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/07/2017 09:12 pm...Thank you for the contact information. It is too far away for me to visit Cal State, though.Besides the bearing, the hysteresis of the beam elastic bending may play a role too. I need to think hard to find a way to remove all those effects.If you are discussing stress-strain hysteresis in the aluminum beam, the beam is made of aerospace aluminum grade, it is trivial to calculate that the strains in the beam are infinitesimal and therefore hysteresis of the beam is non-existent, since the strains in the beam are orders of magnitude below the yield strain. Aerospace engineers reading this that are familiar with fatigue calculations and elastic-plastic deformations in metals will realize this at once.
...Thank you for the contact information. It is too far away for me to visit Cal State, though.Besides the bearing, the hysteresis of the beam elastic bending may play a role too. I need to think hard to find a way to remove all those effects.
I came up with an experiment that could potentially falsify MEGA. Let me think it over and polish it further. I may seek publishing the idea.
Quote from: Mulletron on 09/11/2017 03:20 pmQuote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/11/2017 02:29 pmQuote from: Mulletron on 09/11/2017 01:02 amFrom what I was thinking about above, the same thing is happening in a MET (just talking about the device, not Mach effects theory). A changing energy density (capacitor being charged and discharged) is being jerked around (back and forth in the case of a MET) by a PZT. The return journey doesn't look like a good design feature to have, although if you think about it, it's inevitable in a resonant system. I'm thinking really hard about why the addition of the rubber pad (from the book Making Starships) greatly increased the thrust. That's a good way to absorb energy and reduce the return energy by reducing r. That rubber pad is dissipative. That's the asymmetry. This is an electromechanical version of the EMdrive. They're analogous. Pics included for research purposes.May I suggest that the rubber pad allowed room for the copper block to move back and forth, thus allowed more intense vibration? If so, it can be replaced with a compressed spring.It looks to me like the rubber pad is the dissipative element, serving the same function as the dielectric disc in an EMdrive. They're both lowering the amount of reflected energy by turning it into heat. They both serve to facilitate a partial standing wave. If you really think about it, it's immediately obvious why a fully superconducting EMdrive is a BAD idea. You better have a load on it.Do you predict the "thrust" to change direction, if the rubber washer is installed on the other side (on the nut side, not on the bolt side)? From my understanding of how it worked, the "thrust" will likely change direction.
Quote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/11/2017 02:29 pmQuote from: Mulletron on 09/11/2017 01:02 amFrom what I was thinking about above, the same thing is happening in a MET (just talking about the device, not Mach effects theory). A changing energy density (capacitor being charged and discharged) is being jerked around (back and forth in the case of a MET) by a PZT. The return journey doesn't look like a good design feature to have, although if you think about it, it's inevitable in a resonant system. I'm thinking really hard about why the addition of the rubber pad (from the book Making Starships) greatly increased the thrust. That's a good way to absorb energy and reduce the return energy by reducing r. That rubber pad is dissipative. That's the asymmetry. This is an electromechanical version of the EMdrive. They're analogous. Pics included for research purposes.May I suggest that the rubber pad allowed room for the copper block to move back and forth, thus allowed more intense vibration? If so, it can be replaced with a compressed spring.It looks to me like the rubber pad is the dissipative element, serving the same function as the dielectric disc in an EMdrive. They're both lowering the amount of reflected energy by turning it into heat. They both serve to facilitate a partial standing wave. If you really think about it, it's immediately obvious why a fully superconducting EMdrive is a BAD idea. You better have a load on it.
Quote from: Mulletron on 09/11/2017 01:02 amFrom what I was thinking about above, the same thing is happening in a MET (just talking about the device, not Mach effects theory). A changing energy density (capacitor being charged and discharged) is being jerked around (back and forth in the case of a MET) by a PZT. The return journey doesn't look like a good design feature to have, although if you think about it, it's inevitable in a resonant system. I'm thinking really hard about why the addition of the rubber pad (from the book Making Starships) greatly increased the thrust. That's a good way to absorb energy and reduce the return energy by reducing r. That rubber pad is dissipative. That's the asymmetry. This is an electromechanical version of the EMdrive. They're analogous. Pics included for research purposes.May I suggest that the rubber pad allowed room for the copper block to move back and forth, thus allowed more intense vibration? If so, it can be replaced with a compressed spring.
From what I was thinking about above, the same thing is happening in a MET (just talking about the device, not Mach effects theory). A changing energy density (capacitor being charged and discharged) is being jerked around (back and forth in the case of a MET) by a PZT. The return journey doesn't look like a good design feature to have, although if you think about it, it's inevitable in a resonant system. I'm thinking really hard about why the addition of the rubber pad (from the book Making Starships) greatly increased the thrust. That's a good way to absorb energy and reduce the return energy by reducing r. That rubber pad is dissipative. That's the asymmetry. This is an electromechanical version of the EMdrive. They're analogous. Pics included for research purposes.
Quote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/11/2017 05:34 pmQuote from: Mulletron on 09/11/2017 03:20 pmQuote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/11/2017 02:29 pmQuote from: Mulletron on 09/11/2017 01:02 amFrom what I was thinking about above, the same thing is happening in a MET (just talking about the device, not Mach effects theory). A changing energy density (capacitor being charged and discharged) is being jerked around (back and forth in the case of a MET) by a PZT. The return journey doesn't look like a good design feature to have, although if you think about it, it's inevitable in a resonant system. I'm thinking really hard about why the addition of the rubber pad (from the book Making Starships) greatly increased the thrust. That's a good way to absorb energy and reduce the return energy by reducing r. That rubber pad is dissipative. That's the asymmetry. This is an electromechanical version of the EMdrive. They're analogous. Pics included for research purposes.May I suggest that the rubber pad allowed room for the copper block to move back and forth, thus allowed more intense vibration? If so, it can be replaced with a compressed spring.It looks to me like the rubber pad is the dissipative element, serving the same function as the dielectric disc in an EMdrive. They're both lowering the amount of reflected energy by turning it into heat. They both serve to facilitate a partial standing wave. If you really think about it, it's immediately obvious why a fully superconducting EMdrive is a BAD idea. You better have a load on it.Do you predict the "thrust" to change direction, if the rubber washer is installed on the other side (on the nut side, not on the bolt side)? From my understanding of how it worked, the "thrust" will likely change direction.I attach a picture of the present MEGA drive (bottom picture) to compare with the early version from years ago in the book (top picture).Notice how much smaller is the rubber gasket compared to the rubber pad used for the device of many years ago shown in the book. The present rubber gasket is confined to distribute stresses resulting from the fasteners, to reduce stress concentrations (see https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=42978.msg1721787#msg1721787 for explanation), rather than a large rubber pad as shown in the book. Moreover, when thicker rubber pads were tested, the measured force decreased, as one would expect from dissipation effect decreasing the quality of resonance Q, so experiment confirms theory.
I'm curious about other possibilities than PZT stacks to fluctuate energy and create mass changes. What about thermal or mechanical effects? Things that could be made on a larger scale? Thanks.
Bob:"I'm curious about other possibilities than PZT stacks to fluctuate energy and create mass changes. What about thermal or mechanical effects? Things that could be made on a larger scale? Thanks."Please look at the attached 2012 JPC paper from Woodward and Fearn and look at the MEGA drive thrust equation 21 on page 8, which is near complete except not including the Q-factor losses in each MEGA drive component and their respective physical sizes. An engineering oversight that Dr. Rodal will be more than happy to tell you was a blunder by Woodward and Fearn and then he will show you why. (In defense of the authors of this paper, being teachers and researchers first and foremost, their main goal in writing it was the validation of the Mach-Effect physics, not to get all the engineering niceties nailed down in the making of such thrusters.) Be that as it may, you will notice in the numerator of the MEGA-drive equation-21 the variables that will increase thrust for a given OD sized piezoelectric stack with larger OD stacks generally providing larger thrust levels with everything else being equal. However, ALL of these variables plus their respective ac losses are not independent of each other. This MEGA-drive thrust equation variable inter-dependence requires a fair about of engineering compromising while selecting these variables during the MEGA-drive design process, but we can already see that increasing the w^6 operating freq, increasing the driven V^4 operating voltage and x^3 stack excursion distances while minimizing i^2*R losses in each of the stack components while concurrently increasing their heat rejection capability will greatly increase the steady-state operating thrust of the MEGA drive. (One of these thrust scaling parameters was already demonstrated by Woodward in several of his 2012 MEGA-drive prototypes that inadvertently excited the 3rd and 4th harmonics in their operations. I.e., they doubled the effective operating frequency of the MEGA-drive stack from ~33 kHz to ~66 kHz with a thrust increase from ~2 uN at 33 kHz to over 128 uN at 66 kHz thus demonstrating this thrust equation's w^6 scaling rule.) Then you have the secondary engineering parameters in the thrust equation-21 such as the piezoelectric constant Kp^2 and its electrostrictive constant Ke, plus the amount of dielectric mass used to control via the initial material choices for the stack and of course the physical design of the stack as well. Lastly in the denominator of this equation we see that we should minimize the dielectric's density as well if we are to fully maximize the thrust output. Best, Paul M.
Quote from: Bob012345 on 09/13/2017 08:49 pmI'm curious about other possibilities than PZT stacks to fluctuate energy and create mass changes. What about thermal or mechanical effects? Things that could be made on a larger scale? Thanks.Our thoughts start to converge. I am also thinking about mechanical effects, such as the one in the Dean Drive. Careful experiment can reveal whether there is one. A good experiment needs to take care of every possibility by means of control experiments. For example, will the change of the beam material to aluminum or wood make a difference? How about fix the drive to the beam with cushions? Rotate the beam to different angles to the earth magnetic field?
Quote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/14/2017 04:59 pmQuote from: Bob012345 on 09/13/2017 08:49 pmI'm curious about other possibilities than PZT stacks to fluctuate energy and create mass changes. What about thermal or mechanical effects? Things that could be made on a larger scale? Thanks.Our thoughts start to converge. I am also thinking about mechanical effects, such as the one in the Dean Drive. Careful experiment can reveal whether there is one. A good experiment needs to take care of every possibility by means of control experiments. For example, will the change of the beam material to aluminum or wood make a difference? How about fix the drive to the beam with cushions? Rotate the beam to different angles to the earth magnetic field?Yes, we might be on the same wavelength in general but I doubt that the Dean drive as originally conceived would have any direct relevance and a Mach effect device should be designed from scratch. Dean may have has some suspicions that rotating masses may provide thrust but his approach had no hope of working in the realm of classical physics.
Quote from: Bob012345 on 09/14/2017 05:30 pmQuote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/14/2017 04:59 pmQuote from: Bob012345 on 09/13/2017 08:49 pmI'm curious about other possibilities than PZT stacks to fluctuate energy and create mass changes. What about thermal or mechanical effects? Things that could be made on a larger scale? Thanks.Our thoughts start to converge. I am also thinking about mechanical effects, such as the one in the Dean Drive. Careful experiment can reveal whether there is one. A good experiment needs to take care of every possibility by means of control experiments. For example, will the change of the beam material to aluminum or wood make a difference? How about fix the drive to the beam with cushions? Rotate the beam to different angles to the earth magnetic field?Yes, we might be on the same wavelength in general but I doubt that the Dean drive as originally conceived would have any direct relevance and a Mach effect device should be designed from scratch. Dean may have has some suspicions that rotating masses may provide thrust but his approach had no hope of working in the realm of classical physics.Rotating mass is just mass moving back and forth in two dimensions. I am interested in whether the same balance beam system used in Dr. Woodward's experiment will measure some uN's of thrust if we mount a Dean Drive on one side.
Quote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/14/2017 09:53 pmQuote from: Bob012345 on 09/14/2017 05:30 pmQuote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/14/2017 04:59 pmQuote from: Bob012345 on 09/13/2017 08:49 pmI'm curious about other possibilities than PZT stacks to fluctuate energy and create mass changes. What about thermal or mechanical effects? Things that could be made on a larger scale? Thanks.Our thoughts start to converge. I am also thinking about mechanical effects, such as the one in the Dean Drive. Careful experiment can reveal whether there is one. A good experiment needs to take care of every possibility by means of control experiments. For example, will the change of the beam material to aluminum or wood make a difference? How about fix the drive to the beam with cushions? Rotate the beam to different angles to the earth magnetic field?Yes, we might be on the same wavelength in general but I doubt that the Dean drive as originally conceived would have any direct relevance and a Mach effect device should be designed from scratch. Dean may have has some suspicions that rotating masses may provide thrust but his approach had no hope of working in the realm of classical physics.Rotating mass is just mass moving back and forth in two dimensions. I am interested in whether the same balance beam system used in Dr. Woodward's experiment will measure some uN's of thrust if we mount a Dean Drive on one side.See page ten highlight in the attached.
Quote from: HMXHMX on 09/15/2017 03:32 amQuote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/14/2017 09:53 pmQuote from: Bob012345 on 09/14/2017 05:30 pmQuote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/14/2017 04:59 pmQuote from: Bob012345 on 09/13/2017 08:49 pmI'm curious about other possibilities than PZT stacks to fluctuate energy and create mass changes. What about thermal or mechanical effects? Things that could be made on a larger scale? Thanks.Our thoughts start to converge. I am also thinking about mechanical effects, such as the one in the Dean Drive. Careful experiment can reveal whether there is one. A good experiment needs to take care of every possibility by means of control experiments. For example, will the change of the beam material to aluminum or wood make a difference? How about fix the drive to the beam with cushions? Rotate the beam to different angles to the earth magnetic field?Yes, we might be on the same wavelength in general but I doubt that the Dean drive as originally conceived would have any direct relevance and a Mach effect device should be designed from scratch. Dean may have has some suspicions that rotating masses may provide thrust but his approach had no hope of working in the realm of classical physics.Rotating mass is just mass moving back and forth in two dimensions. I am interested in whether the same balance beam system used in Dr. Woodward's experiment will measure some uN's of thrust if we mount a Dean Drive on one side.See page ten highlight in the attached.I think their way to remove Dean Drive effect from their asserted Mach effect thrust was incorrect. On the opposite of what they said they proved, their experiment of using equal weight mass proved that when Dean Drive effect was removed by using equal size mass, the thrust was gone. Let us assume the Mach effect thrust exist. There original test then had both Mach effect thrust and potentially Dean Drive effect "thrust". A correctly designed experiment to deal with the Dean Drive effect noise is one of the following,1. that removes Dean Drive effect thrust but keeps Mach effect thrust.2. that removes Mach effect thrust but keeps Dean Drive effect thrust.I guess their intention was 1; but what they did was 3,3. that removes both Dean Drive effect thrust and Mach effect thrust, by using equal size mass, and ends up with no thrust from either.
Quote from: PotomacNeuron on 09/15/2017 12:14 pmQuote from: HMXHMX on 09/15/2017 03:32 amSee page ten highlight in the attached.I think their way to remove Dean Drive effect from their asserted Mach effect thrust was incorrect. On the opposite of what they said they proved, their experiment of using equal weight mass proved that when Dean Drive effect was removed by using equal size mass, the thrust was gone. Let us assume the Mach effect thrust exist. There original test then had both Mach effect thrust and potentially Dean Drive effect "thrust". A correctly designed experiment to deal with the Dean Drive effect noise is one of the following,1. that removes Dean Drive effect thrust but keeps Mach effect thrust.2. that removes Mach effect thrust but keeps Dean Drive effect thrust.I guess their intention was 1; but what they did was 3,3. that removes both Dean Drive effect thrust and Mach effect thrust, by using equal size mass, and ends up with no thrust from either.You seem to be trying to tell me that there is no Mach effect but there is a 'Dean drive' effect going on. That's not where I see things. They and several other groups have reported what they believe to be solid data showing a Mach effect. You are free to reject their analysis and conclusions but I don't have good reason to do so.
Quote from: HMXHMX on 09/15/2017 03:32 amSee page ten highlight in the attached.I think their way to remove Dean Drive effect from their asserted Mach effect thrust was incorrect. On the opposite of what they said they proved, their experiment of using equal weight mass proved that when Dean Drive effect was removed by using equal size mass, the thrust was gone. Let us assume the Mach effect thrust exist. There original test then had both Mach effect thrust and potentially Dean Drive effect "thrust". A correctly designed experiment to deal with the Dean Drive effect noise is one of the following,1. that removes Dean Drive effect thrust but keeps Mach effect thrust.2. that removes Mach effect thrust but keeps Dean Drive effect thrust.I guess their intention was 1; but what they did was 3,3. that removes both Dean Drive effect thrust and Mach effect thrust, by using equal size mass, and ends up with no thrust from either.
See page ten highlight in the attached.
Regarding the energy conservation issue, I'm glad that Dr. Woodward recognized the true behaviour of the MET/MEGA drive.From what I got from Estes Park workshop videos it seems like the current explanation of the energy extraction mechanism is a sort of gravity assist with the universe. Could someone involved please give me some more detail about it? I know pretty well how conventional gravity assist works, but I fail to see how such process applies to this device.If we imagine to model the observable universe as a spherical shell of uniform density with the device in its center, is it then correct to assume that a mass fluctuation in the device corresponds to an equal and opposite uniformly distributed mass fluctuation in the surrounding cosmic shell?If, through its interaction with the device, this shell could sligthly reduce its radius after each MEGA cycle then its gravitational potential would decrease, and the potential energy lost could correspond to the kinetic energy acquired by the drive.The problem I see is that the push-pull action of the device doesn't seem compatible with such radial "collapse", so to say.Is this picture correct?
quote in bottom image: "Energy and Momentum* The kinetic energy of the spacecraft comes from the gravitational field....* Momentum of the open system is conserved since the energy gained by the space craft is potential energy lost by the gravitational field of the universe."
The main important idea of Feynman Wheeler theory is to use propagators which are non-causal, that can go forward and backward in time.
The appearance of momentum conservation violation in our impulse engine doesn't mean that momentum isn't conserved. It means that we can't treat the impulse engine as an isolated system. Since the effect responsible for the apparent violation of the conservation principle is inertial/gravitational, this should come as no surprise at all. As Mach's principle makes plain, anytime a process involves gravity/inertia, the only meaningful isolated system is the entire universe. Since inertial reaction forces appear instantaneous [see Woodward, 1996a and Cramer, 1997 in this connection], evidently our impulse engine is engaging in some "non-local" momentum transfer with the distant matter in the universe. With suitable choice of gauge, this momentum transfer can be envisaged as transpiring via retarded and advanced disturbances in the gravitational field that propagate with speed c.Gauge freedom muddies up discussions of inertial reaction effects [Woodward, 1996a]. Choosing a gauge where all physical influences propagate at speeds figure has the advantage that lightcones in space-time have an invariant meaning, whereas the surfaces of simultaneity that appear in other gauges (e.g., the Coulomb gauge) do not. As just mentioned, in the Lorentz [or Einstein-Hilbert] gauge the inertial reaction effect, and thus our impulse engine, consists of a retarded/advanced coupling between the engine and the distant matter in the universe that lies along the future light cone.The introduction of the force transducer in the engine allows us to extract a net momentum flux here and now from the potentially largely thermalized matter in the far future. The net momentum flux is accompanied by a net energy flux, so although our impulse engine, considered locally, appears to violate energy conservation, that need not necessarily be the case. The extraction of useful work from matter that may be completely thermalized raises interesting questions. Boosting, rather than borrowing, from the future, however, seems to be the nature of the process involved.
Considering those conservation issues, a Mach effect thruster relies on Mach's principle, hence it is not an electrical to kinetic transducer, i.e. it does not convert electric energy to kinetic energy. Rather, a Mach Effect Thruster is a gravinertial transistor that controls the flow of gravinertial flux, in and out of the active mass of the thruster. The primary power into the thruster is contained in the flux of the gravitational field, not the electricity that powers the device. Failing to account for this flux, is much the same as failing to account for the wind on a sail.[87] Mach effects are relativistic by nature, and considering a spaceship accelerating with a Mach effect thruster, the propellant is not accelerating with the ship, so the situation should be treated as an accelerating and therefore non-inertial reference frame, where F does not equal ma. Keith H. Wanser, professor of physics at California State University, Fullerton, published a paper in 2013 concerning the conservation issues of Mach effect thrusters.
Thank you dustinthewind.I find a bit absurd that such an important issue has not been addressed by Woodward and the team members that have worked with him through the years. All I can find are generic qualitative statements such as Fearn "gravity assist" or what Woodward wrote on his webpage almost 20 years ago (https://physics.fullerton.edu/~jimw/nasa-pap/):QuoteThe appearance of momentum conservation violation in our impulse engine doesn't mean that momentum isn't conserved. It means that we can't treat the impulse engine as an isolated system. Since the effect responsible for the apparent violation of the conservation principle is inertial/gravitational, this should come as no surprise at all. As Mach's principle makes plain, anytime a process involves gravity/inertia, the only meaningful isolated system is the entire universe. Since inertial reaction forces appear instantaneous [see Woodward, 1996a and Cramer, 1997 in this connection], evidently our impulse engine is engaging in some "non-local" momentum transfer with the distant matter in the universe. With suitable choice of gauge, this momentum transfer can be envisaged as transpiring via retarded and advanced disturbances in the gravitational field that propagate with speed c.Gauge freedom muddies up discussions of inertial reaction effects [Woodward, 1996a]. Choosing a gauge where all physical influences propagate at speeds figure has the advantage that lightcones in space-time have an invariant meaning, whereas the surfaces of simultaneity that appear in other gauges (e.g., the Coulomb gauge) do not. As just mentioned, in the Lorentz [or Einstein-Hilbert] gauge the inertial reaction effect, and thus our impulse engine, consists of a retarded/advanced coupling between the engine and the distant matter in the universe that lies along the future light cone.The introduction of the force transducer in the engine allows us to extract a net momentum flux here and now from the potentially largely thermalized matter in the far future. The net momentum flux is accompanied by a net energy flux, so although our impulse engine, considered locally, appears to violate energy conservation, that need not necessarily be the case. The extraction of useful work from matter that may be completely thermalized raises interesting questions. Boosting, rather than borrowing, from the future, however, seems to be the nature of the process involved. Or this excerpt from wikipedia (clearly taken from Ron Stahl article):QuoteConsidering those conservation issues, a Mach effect thruster relies on Mach's principle, hence it is not an electrical to kinetic transducer, i.e. it does not convert electric energy to kinetic energy. Rather, a Mach Effect Thruster is a gravinertial transistor that controls the flow of gravinertial flux, in and out of the active mass of the thruster. The primary power into the thruster is contained in the flux of the gravitational field, not the electricity that powers the device. Failing to account for this flux, is much the same as failing to account for the wind on a sail.[87] Mach effects are relativistic by nature, and considering a spaceship accelerating with a Mach effect thruster, the propellant is not accelerating with the ship, so the situation should be treated as an accelerating and therefore non-inertial reference frame, where F does not equal ma. Keith H. Wanser, professor of physics at California State University, Fullerton, published a paper in 2013 concerning the conservation issues of Mach effect thrusters.Again, very generic. Nowhere in the literature available on Mach/Woodward effect there's a clear quantitative statement with equations characterizing the source of energy/momentum or a full balance including both the device and the rest of the universe where it is showed clearly where the energy comes from. And from what I saw from Estes Park videos no one asked more to Fearn or Woodward about this.(minute 20:34)I'm curious if that stack of calculations performed using HN/Gravity absorber theory Fearn is referring to at the end of the video contains at least some elements that could shed light on this. I feel this is something that should have been tackled long time ago.