Bet that got yalls attention
I just read about the new carbon fiber nanotube wheels and got to thinking----damn brain will not let me alone.
Would it be cool if we had a rotor made from this(if possible -?thermodynamics etc)---just think of what would happen if we could lose 4lbs(guess) off one rotor?
Holy batman!
olddragger

 

Carbon fiber and carbon nanotubes are different things. While principally the same, carbon fibers are 5,000 times larger than carbon nanotubes, which are still in their infancy as a technology. Also, carbon nanotubes have incredible tensile strength but any force perpendicular to the nanotube will have no trouble bending it.

But yes, halving the weight of a rotor would be fantastic. Has anyone tried titanium yet?

 

yes.. it will bend... but you can have the nano tubes "interweave" to something that looks like a hand knitted yarn potholder. saw a kick *** demonstration at bnl one time

 

halving the weight of the rotors would allow us to increase the redline to around 12-13k RPM... (whether or not we want to is another question)

anyone actually know something about materials tech? would love to see some discussion to this effect...

 

just think of the lessen load on the bearings, the quick reving, the ability to run LARGER rotors!! Boogles my mind.
OD

 

Not sure. A few years ago visiting a Kennametal plant I saw some very interesting triangular parts they sintered from Titanium, and they looked almost exactly like rotors that needed some final machining. A little larger than the 13B rotors. They wouldn't comment on the customer or application.

 

air flow....

 

hence not sure if we would want that.. give it another set of ports and probably another stage in the VFAD..

 

i would lean towards believing anyone who discussed doing the possibility of something this extreme would also understand and be fine with the fact the OEM intake manifolds are gonna have to go

 

Are any aspects of titanium technically insufficient for this application? It IS a bit ductile, especially at temp. Could there be a creeping problem?

 

Then we would need a new set of S/C impellers.....
Clutch?
The transmission would need to go away.
Differential?
RX8 sub-frame?

 

i'd be more enthusiastic about a ceramic rotary engine... at least it would catch on fire and burn

 

The only real problem with that is the transmission will fall apart at such high revolutions. The Renesis was benchmarked and pushed all the way up to 15,000 RPMs with no problems by the Mazda engineers. The only problem was that when they attached a transmission to it, the transmission fails.

 

...sooooo....a better transmission...?

omg idk wtf im talking about...why am i so mechtarded?

why am in this thread?

why am i even posting?

 

The 5 speed by mazsport could help with that. If an F1 engine can rev to 20K than a 10-15k tranny can't be unfeasible.

I'm more concerned with the actual material of the rotors. I think that the point of titanium is that it is as strong as steel with half the thickness. That means to lighten a rotor while keeping the strength, one would have to design a rotor that is hollow in some areas to lose any real weight.

If this proves to be a feasible option than I may move on this. Just need to get information first.

 

Well, if you have that kind of time/money, you may as well buy a few grams of carbon nano-tubes to mix into your Ti-Al alloy and get another 50% strength increase with zero mass increase.

 

I'd like to see an F1 team get its hands on some rotary engines and see what they could do with em, with their crazy resources...

 

+1

 

yea baby--i can see and hear in my little mind a rx8 coming down the front straight at 15K---whoa baby---think people would want one then?
olddragger

 

carbon nanotubes will never be used in a rotor, sorry guys, it takes so long for one to "grow" about a millimeter let along a rotor lol, plus there extremely expensive to buy (for research or any other projects). also so far they have only been able to grow them in straight fibers.

sorry im a physics nerd and at boston college they have a huge research team devouted to carbon nanotube technology so "carbon fiber nanotube rotary" was kinda unsettling

 

"carbon nanotubes will never be used in a rotor"

Ahh, a member of the "establishment." I'll kindly ignore your comments as similar comments are usually proven absurd approximately 20 years after they're made.

"never" is just way too long to be taken seriously any how. Is it a viable production concept? Not right now. Making an entire rotor out of them would be less than ideal, too. But doping alloys with nano-tubes is proving VERY beneficial in the strength to weight ratio department.

 

the earth is flat. careful not to fall off...

 

hate to break it to ya but they are already making wheels from this stuff
must be able to grow them ok!
olddragger

 

Olddragger, are you sure they're carbon nanotubes and not just regular old carbon fiber? I doubt nanotubes are being used in any consumer application, let alone wheels. They'd cost about $200k each. Carbon fiber wheels hit the market recently and they're very light but expensive and fragile. I hear they're prone to shattering in bad potholes. After all, carbon fiber is just fiberglass with a different layup material.

What I would like to see, as mentioned, are rotors made of a lighter metal like titanium or aluminum or some alloy. I'm sure these have already been tried and deemed unsuitable for one reason or another (my guess is thermal expansion or cost).

Really, though, I think they should give this a go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal

 

I know one thing. nothing is for certain. god i love supercomputers. material science gets better and better... why ... the server.. yes the server.. no longer do you need a few million... now a dell server rack is only 15k. thank you tech