How does the Gyro-X Car work?
You might expectthat a car with only two wheels would tip over on its side, but not this car. It's called the Gyro-X andit's a self-balancing car. It does this throughthe use of a gyroscope. The Gyro-X was developedin the late 1960s. It was a prototype that was still years away from completion. Compared to the other carsof the time, it was smaller, more aerodynamic, andmuch more fuel efficient. The car still needed manyimprovements, and unfortunately, the company went out of business before all the problems could be solved. For many decades this carwas all but forgotten. Fast-forward to the year 2011 and the Lane Motor Museumin Nashville, Tennessee purchased the car to restoreit to its original condition. (light jazz music) The engine is in the back hereand it's powered by gasoline. The front of the car iswhere the magic happens. This is the gyroscope, whichkeeps the car balanced. To understand how this works, let's first look at a toy gyroscope. If you've never playedwith one of these before then it can seem really strange at first. Once the disc in the center is spinning you can do things like balanceit on the edge of a string, or on the tip of a pencil. The gyroscope maintains its orientation. As the spinning disc slows down, it will start to wobble until it finally loses balance and falls down. More sophisticated gyroscopeswill have multiple gimbals so that no matter whichway the frame rotates, the spinning disc can maintainits original orientation.
This is extremely useful witha wide variety of applications including airplanes,and even space stations so that they always know whichdirection they are facing. But there are somestrange properties about a gyroscope that's not very intuitive. Let's say our gyroscope is spinning, and we try to rotate thegyroscope on another axis, the resulted force is actually90 degrees in this direction. This phenomenon is referredto as gyroscopic precession. This is best demonstratedwith another experiment. Here's a chair that can spin freely. Now we have a person sitting in the chair holding a spinning gyroscope. In this case it's a bike tire, but this experiment will work with just about any rotating object. If the person turns the gyroscope they will start to spinslowly in the chair. That is, by applyingtorque to the gyroscope the resulted force spins the chair. And if the gyroscopeis turned the other way the chair will spin the other way too. I just want to mention that the bike tire is spinning clockwise, but if the direction was reversed, then the chair would spin the other way. Now let's come back to the Gyro-X car. Only two wheels here, so normally this car wouldtip over to one side. The gyroscope, however, keeps us balanced. Let's take a closer look. Peel away a few layers andyou'll get to the flywheel. This is like the spinningdisc in our toy gyroscope. This weighs about 230 pounds, and you'll notice that most of the weight is towards the outside. The hydraulic pumps will get it spinning at about 3,000 rotations per minute. The increased weight and speed, at least when comparedto our toy gyroscope, means that the forces hereare going to be strong enough to balance the entire weight of this car. The flywheel is placedinside of the gimbal housing.
There's an arm that'sattached to the side here. This is called the precessional ram. It's responsible forturning the gyroscope. This will happen when a control system senses that the car is off balanced, or when the car is making a turn. Here's the gyro housing. And this is all put inside of a frame, which then goes under thehood of the Gyro-X car. So what happens here is thatwhen the gyroscope turns it creates a force strongenough to balance the car. It's the same effect that happens in the experiment with the swivel chair. It might be easier to visualize this if we turn the experiment on its side, and maybe ignore gravity. Turn the gyro and the person rotates. It's the same thing with the car. Turn the gyro and the car wants to rotate, or in this case balance out. What I'm gonna do here is showa few different situations and how the gyroscope will adjust. When the car is at rest, the gyroscope slowly turnsto keep the car balanced. Now let's say something pushesagainst the side of the car. Boom! Notice how quickly thegyroscope has to respond to create a force strongenough to balance the car. The car also might get off balanced. This might happen in the case of the driver sitting off to one side. Now let's see the car in motion. Going in a straight line theremight be a slight wobble, just as we've seen before. When turning the car the gyroscope helps assist in making the turn. Notice how it turns in the samedirection as the front tire. I think that's pretty cool. When we're done drivingthe two side wheels come down to stabilize the car, otherwise it would eventually tip over. The flywheel has enoughmomentum that it will continue to spin for up to two hours on its own. It's too bad this car neverhit the production line. It would've been really neat to own one. But luckily if you ever find yourself in Nashville, Tennessee you can go visit the Lane Motor Museum tosee this car in person. The museum specializes in uniquecars from around the world with many unusual vintage cars that you won't see anywhere else.
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Thanks for reading: How a Gyro-X Car works? || application of gyroscope in automobile || gyroscope vehicle stabilization, Sorry, my English is bad:)