“Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
1–10 of 55 posts
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#2I'm not a fan of the bias towards "Gears are old tech, and that makes them bad" but I can see a lot of interesting possibilities with fluid coupling. The variables involved in power transmission for these things would be pretty wild to characterize, and the article video clearly shows inefficiencies in the system with the driven cylinder having counter rotational flow against it.
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#3Virtually zero torque right?
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#4Do we understand fluid mechanics well enough now to just design things like this from scratch, or is it still mostly trial and error? TFA seems to imply the latter, but....
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#5How is this different from slushomatics? Sounds exactly like old school fluid couplings.
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#6There must be some reason PRL chose to publish this, but it's not apparent to me from TFA or the abstract, and I'm not interested enough to login via my institution.
It's not new that you could set up co- or counter-rotation in such a system. This seems like the sort of thing G. I. Taylor had as a bath toy.
Maybe impossibly tiny and unresponsive torques are useful somewhere?
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#7Ever driven a vehicle with an automatic transmission rather than a manual gearshift with a clutch? Then you almost certainly used a fluid coupling: basically two fans in a can with oil so turning one turns the other.
The article is so full of hype it doesn't bother to explain how this is different from the "fluid gears" invented in 1905.
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#8reminds me of a tesla turbine -- only less efficient
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#9Ever driven a vehicle with an automatic transmission rather than a manual gearshift with a clutch? Then you almost certainly used a fluid coupling: basically two fans in a can with oil so turning one turns the other. The article is so full of hype it doesn't bother to explain how this is different from the "fluid gears" invented in 1905.
As immortalised in the 1978 song "Greased Ligthnin'" from the film Grease:
Well, this car is automatic
It's systematic
It's hydromatic
Why it's greased lightnin' (greased lightnin')
Re: “Fluid gears” invention offers promise for improving mechanical devices
#10Ever driven a vehicle with an automatic transmission rather than a manual gearshift with a clutch? Then you almost certainly used a fluid coupling: basically two fans in a can with oil so turning one turns the other. The article is so full of hype it doesn't bother to explain how this is different from the "fluid gears" invented in 1905.
Except a fluid clutch actually works, and a torque converter works even better and has three fans inside it ;-)
I can see the "passive" cylinder getting dragged around a little by viscosity but I don't see how this could transfer even the tiniest amount of power.