For race cars: A gyroscope is mounted in the car horozontal to the track. We have all held a spinning bycycle wheel and felt the resistance when we tried to turn it. A gyroscope mounted in a race car horozontally will have a similar effect in dampening the tendency of the car to pitch either left or right, or forward and back. It will also allow the car to go faster around the track due to less body lean in the corners and keeping the tires planted on the surface. The nose of the car would also be held down and the car would be less likely to get "air-borne" should wind get underneath it.
-- FullRaw, Jun 24 2004

Shilovski Gyrocar http://www.dself.ds...rocars/schilovs.htm
[squigbobble, Apr 30 2005]

I must admit this has passed through my mind before and I do think the idea has a lot of merit as it would just limit vertical motion. The drawbacks that I could see are that if the road went downhill even slightly, this would assist in lifting the car and may cause a loss of control.

It may be possible to partially get over this problem by having a mechanism which moves the gyroscope upward pushing the tyres onto the road when the car is cornering or lift is detected (eg. at high speed).

Unfortunately, this will also consume energy and as such I cannot think of any advantage over much simpler spoilers/ front splitter/ ground effects etc.
-- originalsen, Jun 25 2004


Yah, going downhill is an unavoidably big problem. Also, if youg in a wreck and knock the gyro off its mounting, imagine what all that spinning mass wwould do on its way out of your car.
-- 5th Earth, Jun 25 2004


What about straight line drag racing? The gyro could be brought up to speed in staging before the race without robbing the engine of any power. It would continue to spin for the duration of the race and not require any additional power input from the engine. Mind you it would add weight, (and this is a stretch), but maybe the design of the gyro ring could be a circular hollow pipe and the mass of the gyro could consist of circulating oil (which drag racers carry a lot of). If the pipe were finned, it could also cool the oil before being returned to the engine.
-- FullRaw, Jun 25 2004


Consider precession.
-- bristolz, Jun 25 2004


The idea of a gyro-stabilised car has been baked for over 90 years but using a gyro as an anti-roll device on a 4 wheeled car is news to me. If the gyro was spun in the same direction as the wheels it would produce a torque that would turn the car the same way as it's cornering, the only problem is that it will produce an opposing torque as the car straightens out after a corner so the net gain over the whole corner is nowt. Besides, cars already have 4 of these gyros, they're called wheels and if a transversely mounted engine is spinning the same way they have a 5th. I see no reason why these would be useful when far better and more intuitive results can be acheived using anti-roll bars (swaybars).
-- squigbobble, Apr 30 2005


I think Arthur C. Clark proposed using large gyroscopes to stear spaceships. You would just mount it on gimbals and move it around to point the car where it needs to go. Not a bad idea; have a bun.
-- discontinuuity, Jun 05 2005


[rasberry] They're already used to control the orientation of some satellites currently in earth orbit but they work by one of Newton's laws (2nd?). If the gyro disc is stationary the sattelite stays pointing where it is, rotate it one way and the reaction force turns the satellite in the opposite direction around the same axis; stop the disc and the satellite stops pointed in a new direction.
-- squigbobble, Aug 28 2005


I think this would work and I've thought a lot about it since gyros are such good storage devices once you have a CVT or electronic drives. Now that hybrids are less of a rarity, this idea needs reexamination. Super capacitors can perform this job but still have limited power capacity. Also since fuel cells are generally constant output devices, power storage for peak usage is a necessity and my latent interest in MAGLEV restarted my thoughts on gyros, as these are devices that can use their abilities to best advantage.

Realistically you would have to mount the gyro in a spherical holder with locks on each of the axis. Put the sphere in at least partial vacuum to lower aerodynamic drag on the spinning disc. Weight it slightly so that when unpowered the disc would be horizontal. Once the gyro is spinning and you enter a turn, you could apply the anti-roll breaks to use the gyro to minimize roll. This would probably work best with three gyros whose spinning axis’ where aligned along the three orthogonal axis’. In that way, even after movement at least two would be applicable for anti-roll at any time and the energy storage tasks could be spread out to lower their bomb like qualities.
-- MisterQED, Nov 27 2007


//It will also allow the car to go faster around the track due to less body lean in the corners and keeping the tires planted on the surface.//

Maybe the gyroscopic precession could serve to tilt the car even more around tight corners, for an even better turning precision....if the gyroscope were attached to the steering column. (or hydraulically controlled by power steering) [+]
-- quantum_flux, Nov 27 2007



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