Slashdot Mirror
Going Faster Than the Wind In a Wind-Powered Cart
Shawnconna writes "Can a wind cart travel faster than the wind? A group of makers say, 'Yes!' Make: Online has published a story about the Blackbird wind cart that just set a record. This is a follow-up to an earlier story in which Charles Platt built a cart based on a viral video where a guy claimed he'd built a wind-powered vehicle that could travel downwind faster than the windspeed. Charles built one and said it didn't work. Heated debates broke out in forums, on BB, and elsewhere on the Net. In the ensuing time, a number of people have built carts and claimed success, most principally, Rick Cavallaro. He got funding from Google and JOBY to build and test a human-piloted cart. They claim success, with multiple sensor systems on board, impartial judges and experts in attendance."
Not necessary to store energy to go faster than the wind.
The reason this works is that the propeller is able to "push off" against the tail wind. Think of it like sitting on a skateboard and pushing off from a moving wall behind you with your arm. The difficulty in making it work is that you need very little drag and a very efficient propeller. But the energy equations for traveling faster than the wind do balance and there is no violation of energy conservation.
When all else fails, run.
For the more visual people: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-trDF8Yldc
Here's an analysis performed by Mark Drela of MIT (http://web.mit.edu/aeroastro/people/drela.html)
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/attachments/propulsion/28167d1231128492-ddwfttw-directly-downwind-faster-than-wind-ddw2.pdf
Nope, you've got it backwards, the GP got it right, and this is absolutely the key to understanding how this works.
The car isn't using the propeller as a turbine as a source of energy to power the wheels. That, indeed, would be impossible, because once you reach wind speed the force exerted on the propeller is zero.
Instead, it works the other way around, as a fan to push air backwards and accelerate the car. The energy is transfered from the wheels to the fan.
Assume that, to begin with, the car is moving at wind speed. The wheels are spinning (because the car is moving) and you can use that energy (i.e. brake the car) to push the propeller. The propeller blows air backwards, which propels the car forwards. If your mechanism is efficient enough, that push more than counteracts the braking action on the wheels and the car actually accelerates forwards. As it accelerates, the efficiency drops and it eventually stabilizes at some speed, faster than the wind.
Now everyone is shouting "Perpetual motion! You're producing more energy with the fan than you're getting out of the wheels!". Nope. That's the final bit. Let's say that wind speed is 10km/h. If the car is moving at 11km/h (faster than the wind), then the motion on the wheels relative to the ground is 11km/h. However, the fan only has to push air backwards at 1km/h, as the wind is doing the rest and providing the base 10km/h of forward motion. This difference in velocity is what offsets the inevitable energy losses: the ground speed is whatever you're generating with the fan plus the velocity of the wind "for free". This "free velocity" goes down (as a fraction of total velocity) as you accelerate, until it matches the (in)efficiency of the system (energy loss), and this is the stable velocity that the car achieves, faster than the wind.
This really isn't an issue with perpetual motion. It's easy to see that you could use a stationary turbine to generate (say, electric) power from the wind, and then use that power to accelerate a car (say, powered by a laser, so it is not tethered) in a different (windless) location faster than the original wind. Output velocity can be greater than input velocity. The difficulty lies in grasping the interesting mechanics and interactions of the downwind-faster-than-the-wind car uses to achieve this within the original wind itself. It's a mechanics puzzle, not an energy conservation puzzle. Another way to look at it is that the energy lies in the difference between the velocity of the wind and the ground, and the car always has access to both of these moving entities via friction (friction with the wind, and friction of the wheels with the ground), and thus can harness that power regardless of what its own velocity is.