Re: More Performance [lightened flywheels]

[Neal Tovsen <ntovsen@piper.hamline.edu>]

> It seems that a car whit a lightened flywheel would have its motor work more (longer?) to maintain a cruising speed than a car w/o a lightened flywheel; but on the other hand , the lightened flywheel car would accelerate faster.  
> 
> This is just my thinking on the topic as I don't have any scientific, technical knowledge about this.  Makes sense to me though...waddaya think?
> 
> Sooo, lightened flywheel better for acceleration, not so good for cruising?

The flywheel is an energy storage device. When you spin it up, it takes
energy from the engine and essentially stores it as potential energy
relative to the rest of the car. The only way you can reclaim this energy
is if you were to let the engine coast and divert the rotational energy
of the flywheel into the wheels, makin he car coast farther. It doesn't
take any more or less energy to keep the flywheel spinning at a constant
rate, since a body in motion will stay in motion, yadayada.

Any change
in the RPM of an engine involves acceleration or deceleration of the
flywheel, which requires more energy if the flywheel heavier. The only
reason we have a flywheel is to smooth out the energy coming from the
engine. It kinda works like a capacitor in your subwoofer power line. The
pistons create spikes in the power output of the engine, and the flywheel
smooths them out by storing those spikes and releasing some of the energy
during the instances where there is no piston firing and thus the engine
is coasting (we're talking miliseconds, here). This is why an engine will
feel rougher with a lightened flywheel. If you took the flywheel off
completely, the engine would be bouncing all over the engine bay of the
car. The reason they're so heavy on pass. cars is so they give a smoother
ride.

Make sense?
Neal (former physics major)


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