Stirlingengineforum.com

Three questions you will probably want to add to the top ten most stupid questions of all time hall of shame list but here gos anyway:

My goal is to produce power and so I will be attaching magnets to a flywheel next to a stator with wire coils imbedded in glass fibre.

1) Do I go for a heavy cast iron flywheel with most of the weight on the outer rim for any given sized engine or do I go for a lightweight carbon fibre flywheel? The pros and the cons of each would be much appreciated along with the reasoning behind selection of weight.

2) Also I was wondering what effect weight on the outer rim of a flywheel has compared to having weight in the centre of the flywheel and in which situations you would choose inner or outer weight?.

3) Obviously horsepower is power and torque gives rotational brute force for overcoming magnetic cogging or work resistance but which one is more important for power generation and why? I want to use as big magnets as I can for a given sized flywheel and would prefer an engine designed for low rpm to increase the engines life and bearings. which should be more important to me: torque or horsepower for any given sized engine?

Thanks

.Wellington. - (Spearheading stupid questions so nobody else has to.)

No question is stupid if you don't know the answer. Imagine a FW as a lever(rule a horizontal line across the spindle) the rim is the weight, balanced, the further out the weights the more effect, ie., Weight 1lb, radius 2", two inch pound, 1lb 4"R, 4 in Lb. So if you make the fly wheel larger, and keep the same weight, or even reduce the weight it becomes more effective. The slower the motor, the larger the FW requires to be.
A number of my flywheels are made of steel.
I would probably make the alternator separately and belt drive it from the motor, that way the motor can run at it's best speed, as can the alternator, and these two speeds may not be the same.
Ian S C