Articles, links, notes, and discussions for the physics of AWE aspects are
invited from
interested scientists, engineers, technicians, mechanics, specialists, and kite engineers: Notes@EnergyKiteSystems.net
or
tethers@hawpa.net
Magenn's conductive tether (click to the part of the Timeline "The
Wire" "The copper-wrapped Vectran tether proved more
efficient and lifted six cars into the air with their headlights on. The
team had found the material with which to make their tether"
Ever heard of "fractons"? A natural wind field is a fracton...
Here is my current
understanding of "AWE Phononics" Phonon theory
is the missing link as to how "tug" of a tether (or "shove" of a push
rod) transmits energy over distance & allows comparison of tug with
electrical & electromagnetic transmission. While most current phonon
science is concerned with normal modes of phononic vibration between
atoms in a crystal lattice, phonon theory extends to aggregated atomic
vibration into the macroscales of AWE tethers.
Beginning at the atomic scale of our kite line, a single bond in a
UHMWPE molecule, we can quantify how much tug is phonon transmission
to how much energy is dissipated into the environment as convective &
radiative energy. This is a sound basis for calculating the total
thermodynamic performance of our tether.
Wave mechanics remains the most natural formalization of
most macro tether behavior, but phonon theory is a promising tool to
understand some of the weird large-scale vibrational physics realworld
tethers seem to exhibit. ds 9jan2009