Cyclists want lift??!! How do they maintain contact with the road?
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Roger Critchlow
To: nickthomp...@earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Sent: 11/25/2009 10:26:08 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flocking windmills
No, the pelaton uses the lead rider to break a bow wave through the air, but
the eddies from each rider's passage also curl around to give some lift to the
subsequent riders in the pelaton. If you smoothed it out into one long
cylinder, it wouldn't work as well.
The vertical wind turbines work as a flock because they induce a sort of
do-si-do of the wind through the flock, where each rank of turbines is
positioned to catch the eddy from the preceding rank and throw it back to the
next rank. Because the wind takes a longer than straight path through the
flock, it has to move faster than the unimpeded wind. If you just set up a
stonehenge in the same arrangement as the flock of turbines, you'd get the same
sort of velocity effect.
Having the flock adjust its geometry could be a big win. A fixed installation
would be tuned to the most likely wind speed and direction.
-- rec --
On Wed, Nov 25, 2009 at 9:58 AM, Nicholas Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net>
wrote:
Hugh,
Thanks for explaining this to me. I figured it was something like that.
But the logic IS backwards with respect to the bike racer model. The Bike
racer pod is trying to protect the lead racer from wind resistance, the wind
mills are trying to pass that resistance through to ever member of the pod.
We could shrink-wrap the bike-pod, and it would do its job even better. Not so
the windmill pod.
Right?
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Hugh Trenchard
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group;nickthomp...@earthlink.net;Carl Tollander
Cc: Friam@redfish.com
Sent: 11/25/2009 7:15:27 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flocking windmills
...that should read "rotate the position of the fans 90 degrees" (it was late
and I should have been in bed).
----- Original Message -----
From: Hugh Trenchard
To: nickthomp...@earthlink.net ; The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group ; Carl Tollander
Cc: Friam@redfish.com
Sent: Wednesday, November 25, 2009 12:05 AM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flocking windmills
It looks to me the article addresses this. When windmills are in a
conventional "face to the wind" position, they do need to be well spread out in
order to catch as much wind as possible. But if you rotate the position 90 of
the fans degrees so that they are spinning "sideways", they spin with greater
efficiency when lined up behind each other in zones of lower air resistance.
The article appears to refer to this fan position as a "vertical" rotation.
The photo shows "vertically" rotating tube like structures, which are much like
long fans turned on their sides. Aligning them in fish school formation
evidently is the most efficient in terms of space and maximal wattage
generation. That's how it all appears to me in any event.
Hugh Trenchard
----- Original Message -----
From: Nicholas Thompson
To: Carl Tollander
Cc: Friam@redfish.com
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2009 9:45 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flocking windmills
Sorry, everybody. What I meant to write was, "Wait a blithering moment!!!",
suggesting, at least, that the metaphor between bunching up cyclists and
bunching up windturbines was backwards. Don't you WANT your turbines to "feel"
the "headwind"?
Of course I am wrong about this, but I sure would like to understand why.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Carl Tollander
To: nickthomp...@earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Sent: 11/24/2009 10:13:22 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] flocking windmills
What they lack is mobility - lacking some sort of mobile platform maybe they
could get together and decide where the next best placement would be and tell
the manufacturing and installation people. Some sort of distributed
instantiation - Group orders another member, turbine shows up in the mail,
speaks up, says, "I am a wind turbine, the group has determined that it will be
most efficient if you place me over there." And the humans would go do that,
since the turbine family was usually right about such things.
So maybe the turbines "want" some particular configuration, the friction is
just one criteria. If they were a phased array antenna (in addition to being
a group of wind turbines) then they would have additional criteria.
C
Nicholas Thompson wrote:
Now what a blithering moment. Cyclists flock to reduce friction. Ditto fish,
I suppose.
So, turbines want less friction with the wind?????
Something screwy here.
N
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
http://www.cusf.org [City University of Santa Fe]
----- Original Message -----
From: Roger Critchlow
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 11/24/2009 7:36:30 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] flocking windmills
Same power production as existing wind farms in 100th the land area.
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1124/1
-- rec --
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FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
