Hey Joe:
Why don't you build the Fry machine, with the clutches at each rotor, if you like the idea?  Sounds like you think they really knew what they were doing.

The problem of differential torque due to different wind speeds or (?) directions has been well described in Fry's patent. Flexible shaft carrying rotors is not marketed and Fry's patent is not new. I can expect _ the absence of answer about precise questions I ask is a confirmation _ that variants with horizontal-tilted rotors have similar problems. So best prototypes in AWE stay prototypes studied by companies like Makani (flygen), or universities like Tu-Delft (reel-in/out)

 

PierreB 

OK so what exactly does your acronym "RAD" stand for on this particular day, in your mind, and why does it matter?  Is "rapid" synonymous with "frozen"?  What is being developed "rapidly" exactly?

Hey Joe, I'm not a "genius" like you, so I just use google and type in the patent number.  If I put my own patent number into google, it comes up listing the prior art patent citations and Fry/Hise is third on the list.  That took about 20 seconds.  A little further down the list is "helicoidal structures for wind turbines" similar to Dan'l's "SpiralAirfoil", which I also had to overcome as prior art.  If you ever apply for a patent, you'll find there is usually a forest of prior art, and you'll have to negotiate that forest tree-by-tree to get your claims allowed.  The key factor will be whether you really have something new, or if someone has done it before.
:)
Doug S.

OK Pierre, so that means you are not planning on pursuing Superturbine(R) technology, and instead favor kite-reeling, or airplane/kites using auxilary propellers for power transfer.  And that is due to varying wind speeds and directions at various heights that make SuperTurbine(R) not worth pursuing, right?  OK fine, forget you ever heard of it.  I accept your opinion, as your opinion.  It is now on record.  Great, and thanks for at least considering SuperTurbine(R) in your thinking.
:)
Doug S.

Dave S. Thanks for the encouragement to develop ST, and there is nobody as frustrated at my own slow progress than me, as you might imagine.  Just getting a reliable tower-mounted model was difficult, as it turns out.  Most small turbine companies go bankrupt, like the recent market leader for 20 years, Southwest Windpower, after going through something like 80 million dollars, including 10 million from GE Crapital.  What happens to most, like Southwest, is they sell a model in large numbers, then drown in warranty returns because they forgot to properly work the bugs out of their design by testing in the worst sites possible.  People in the worst sites order them, they quickly break or fry the stators and/or inverters, and the company goes under.  Happens to almost every single wind turbine manufacturer.  Very few survive, you can almost count 'em on one hand.   But, why would I want to show progress with ST when you've so carefully "proven" over the years that the driveshaft could not possibly transmit sufficient torque?  I guess that would also apply to the Fry/Hise driveshaft, right?  Joe seems to think I've missed something in that Fry/Hise talk about "clutches" for every rotor.  I guess this is supposed to protect the driveshaft from varying torque from the different rotors?  So if a slower rotor is on a clutch, does it contribute to power or, does it become a worthless add-on inert weight?  And if the driveshaft CAN transmit the torque of the entire machine to the generator, if the driveshaft HAS that torque capacity (which you have amply stated it cannot), why would a differential torque between rotors challenge the integrity of that already-strong-enough driveshaft?  I'm just wondering, between you and Joe, do you guys ever make any sense at all?

Dave S.  "The reel method" is simply the first thought that falls into anyone's head who contemplates airborne wind energy.  It goes something like this:
1) You encounter the general thought or topic of airborne wind energy;
2) The first thing that comes to mind is a kite, which everyone has flown as a child.
3) The interface was a string that pulled upward - we can all remember the feeling of having to pull down on a string that was pulling up;
4) The thought occurs that the familiar upward pull on that string would be "the best way" to harness "the power" of the kite.
5) Going back to the kite, we remember that experienced kite-fliers like to use a reel, so they can keep their string organized and have a ready method of adding or subtracting from the length of the line;
6) The addition of a generator to the reel, as a way to make the kite generate power while the kite pulls upward is imagined, along with the resignation that the kite is also traveling down-wind, which reduces relative windspeed and power output;
7) The ability to power the reel to pull back in is imagined, along with the resignation that this involves a "cycle" where power will be produced only on the out-stroke, and USED on the in-stroke;
8) So the kite-reeling approach to airborne wind energy is, to my mind, barely worthy of anyone claiming to have "invented" it.  It seems very obvious.  What else would any first-timer come up with?  I mean, that was the thought process that led to laddermill in the first place, as a kid back in the 1970's.  My early version of Laddermill was an attempt to correct the deficiencies of the obvious idea of kite-reeling, by eliminating the return cycle, and multiplying power by using multiple working surfaces.  Really, that also seems kind of obvious.  Like if you were capable of thinking your way into the paper-bag of kite-reeling, you could also think your way out of that same paper bag by transitioning to laddermill.  Maybe I have a different perspective, but kite-reeling seems to just be the very first thought someone completely new to airborne wind energy would think of, as a first attempt at a workable AWE solution.  It's just a no-brainer that takes no brains to come up with.  If you went to a kite festival, and asked an 8th grader holding a kite, how to generate power using that kite, he'd probably answer with some version of "kite-reeling".  If you visited an AWE outhouse, the graffiti on the wall might say "Reel kites, how could a million flies be wrong?"

Carbon fiber has about the same strength for its weight as wood.  Steel, aluminum, and titanium also all have comparable strength-to-weight ratios.  The choice of materials is more about density and whether the material takes a permanent bend of fails catastrophically, than strength per se.
Still, with all your stated expertise regarding the inability of a Superturbine(R) driveshaft to transmit sufficient torque, I don't understand why you would waste the time to even mention ST after that.  Don't you have bigger fish to "fry" than discussing concepts that you have already said cannot work?  Why waste one second of your time on it?  You said it can;t work, so that's it - you are the smartest guy in the room, you said it can't work, what you say is true, end of story.   Last I heard, you were "making a difference", working on important AWE stuff.  It was important.  Rapid development - deployment - today you say it doesn't matter which, whereas before you were taking time to distinguish between them.  The distinction seemed worthy of your attention a couple days ago,  What happened to that?  What are you rapidly developing or deploying today?

I have specifically explained many times how a driveshaft is the equivalent of many tethers wound in a helical fashion, transmitting torque along its length.  This explanation is easiest to understand with filament-wound driveshafts, since the fibers literally are arranged in a helical shape, but also  holds true with steel tube driveshafts, or any other driveshaft.
Any hypothetical driveshaft failure due to torque shear can be addressed with higher diameter, lattice construction, or many other options.  As it is, there are many issues to get any machine to run right, and for ST, torque is not one of them, at least at this point, but if it ever is, we have many ways to move forward.  But you already have it all figured out, so why bother discussing it further?

If anyone is a "bothersome troll", your picture is in the Wikipedia under that definition.  Good suggestion, I will find another forum.  Or no forum.  I do not see anything positive happening here, and nobody stays on a subject long enough to make anything happen.  Trying to explain complicated things to simple minds in phrases that can fit on a bumper-sticker is a thankless job, and nobody remembers any of it anyway.  This is a real waste of time.  Roddy had a few good ideas, but he seems to have fallen by the wayside lately, sucked into your and Joe's "negativity over nothingness".  When people in wind energy make positive comments, they are usually interpreted by outsiders as negative comments, to the point that we have realized there is no point interacting with idiots, which is why you can't get Paul Gipe or Mike Barnard to give you the time of day much less "debate" you.  been there done that.  You can't really have a debate with someone with a weak grasp of the subject matter.  What happened to Dan'l's Spiral Airfoil?  That had a lot of discussion on here.  Where is it now?  What difference is anyone here making?  What are the best results anyone on here has shown so far?  Any time spent here is time not making progress.  For awhile I kept thinking that maybe, even if everyone on here was ignorant, something might nonetheless spark a worthy idea, but the overall negativity emanating from a know-it-all attitude by know-nothings makes it toxic, really.  Even the idea of mere camaraderie seems to be getting pretty thin.   I need to give up this forum like the bad habit it is.  Have fun.

This topic thread is dedicated to the history of the "reel" method of doing work by using a kite system. Let line out to accomplish works and then change the resistance of the wing set to low resistance while reeling lines into the reel in order to allow another cycle just described. The method has many names. And the works achieved by the out-going lines drawn by the kite system wing set are many. One name is "Yo-Yo Method" for the out-and-in cycles. Let the wind energy converted draw out line and mine some of that energy do works. Then input energy to accomplish a reeling-in of the lines.   Essays are invited that help display the history of such ancient method of doing works by kite system. The  amount of energy derived from the wind during the let-out phase focused for desired works is a certain portion of the energy converted from the wind. The amount of energy expended to reel lines back is also a certain amount of energy. Depending on the desires of operators and the purposes involved, designs of the kite system will vary. 

Not quite Doug. Prototypes from Makani or Tu-Delft are enough developed to allow a knowledge of their potential and their limits, excepted in case of major changement later. For Serpentine it is not the same.Make an informal test. What do you risk? Seeing at high scale it is possible there are some problems? All tested AWES comprising flygen or reeling have enough limits to be far of viability. The biggest opponent of Superturbine is not DaveS, but yourself. Instead stopping your thinking by drivelling "all road..." you should analyze all the complexity involved by implementing ST and help people trying it. After that things will be a little clearer. Note that a patent is not a report of test.

 

PierreB

Attachments :

Hi JoeF,

 

"Dave Lang, inventor of the Reel scheme,...", in the joined paper which is already is your data.

 

PierreB

 

 

Torque capacity of a driveshaft is easily calculated.  Better yet, tables and online calculators mean you don't even need to do the math.  Torque falls out of simple equations of motion, if you know power and RPM.  None of this is has ever really been in question by engineers.  About as basic as engineering gets. 

No the Skybow is not a "spiral airfoil".  It may get accidentally or incidentally twisted along its length but it is not acting as a "spiral airfoil".  I think even you know that.  You are off-topic and lying as usual.  I asked about Dan'l's spiral airfoil.  Apparently there is no answer.  Maybe your group is mostly down to just you and Joe. 

Well I "envisioned" kite-reeling in the 1970's, and seeing it as sub-optimal my first adjustment was to loop it to eliminate a power-robbing and intermittent need for a return cycle.  The second was to add LOTS of kites, to multiply power.  I mean, seriously, why would anyone stop at one (1) kite?  Geez didn't I just explain this a few hours ago?  But, well I didn;t publish it.  I actually figured that pretty much every engineer who had ever flown a kite had probably thought of it.  Certainly it would be difficult for an engineer or tinkerer to fly a kite with a reel, without asking if there might be a way to connect a generator and get some free power from that kite-on-a-reel.  I mean, seriously, you are asking who thought of that first?  As though it was a brain-teaser or something?  I'll bet it was long, long ago that somebody discussed the idea of kite-reeling somewhere.  I'd check with when someone started using powered kite-reels, for one thing.  Someone may have long ago charged the batteries rather than using them, when letting line out.

The following is a copy of Doug's post on the "reel" method.  I copy it to keep this topic robust under its title so future visitors may follow the topic. 

Though we gave a line-item mention about A. Van Gries giving an alternative method to his main focus, I think the matter might be underplayed yet historically, so this post is to give higher focus on A. van Gries' near parenthetical remark which may stand tall in the history of AWE for itself: 

Congratulations to Professors Mario Milanese, Franco Taddei, Stefano Milanese.

 

AWE can be competitive when swept area will work completely and when its diameter will be roughly as large as length of tether.

 

PierreB
http://flygenkite.com

http://wheelwind.com

An early long drive shaft: 

Midway on the stream of reeling method from ancient to present, we pause to note again Arnold LOEB, paper filed Nov 14, 1977.  Note that he envisioned matters earlier than a formal filing date. :  Yet he was preceded by others for the reel method.

In wings a trickle RAT could stay busy topping positive inflation pressure to significant psi. Safe with overpressure valve.

Lambros LOIS is to be included in the history stream for the Reel Method: 

you must be really stupid to keep writing this kind of stuff.

exactly - reels are lame.  nobody in their right mind would promote such an asinine concept.  laddermill uses pulleys

That will be something!

Makani Power published: