n order to alleviate the crisis that has ensued due to the abuse of our natural non-renewable hydro carbon based fuels, we propose to design a public / private system where the roadways are upgraded to provide propulsion and guidance to all existing vehicles, by means of a power pack retro-fit to the vehicles.
This system will allow all existing vehicles, i.e. cars, light trucks, SUV's etc, to be retro-fit with a power pack underneath the vehicle, attached to the vehicle's drive train front axle. The retro-fit power pack will provide guidance and control to enable the vehicle to be "towed" by a high speed electro-magnetic line embedded in the roadway. In time, most expressways and major roads would be transformed into real "auto-bahns", providing for a computer driven experience, without the need for on-board power of any kind.
The design goals of this system are the following:
The system will be fail safe, since each vehicle is required to have on-board power and control to reach the PTL lanes. We will never have this type of infrastructure in all roadways, only on those with sufficient traffic.
Since the PTL system is both locally and remote controlled, and it is a e-tow based system, there would be no driver required while the vehicle is using the PTL lane. Our commutes will become a time to relax, perhaps use the Internet or eat some snacks, while we talk with our friends and family.
This system will reduce the need for fuels, both fossil and carbon based, since it relies on central electrical power, not portable on-board power.
The infrastructure fore the PTL lanes must be of low cost, replaceable and scalable for future applications. It consists of a three-tube which machine inlaid onto onto existing roadways, be they express ways, and/or main thoroughfares. Each of the tubes will be allocated to several uses, in a partnership between utility companies and the PTL authority involved. The tubes will be dug into a small trench, about 30 cm across any 10cm wide, made with non-corrosive and non-conductive materials, preferably recycled automobile tire compost.
The left tube will be used for utilities, such as power, digital cable and/or fiber optics. Using a common tube for all utilities will allow all "spaghetti" to be removed from the public roadways. In the USA, public roadways are littered with telephone and electric utility metal or wood poles with obsolete wiring and all sorts of pods and connectors. The use of PTL tubes will eliminate this visual blight, without adding a significant cost to the project.
The center tube will be the propulsion and electrical energy tube used in the several purposes propulsion modes. It can be configured with a simple cable, a cable and LSM linear motor stators, a cable, LSM and magnetic resonance wireless electric coil, and perhaps in the future, a low frequency magnetic transport wave. The machine used to lay the road tube should be able to lay at least one mile of tubes per day, per machine, at a low cost, probably about US$ 10,000.- per kilometer. The tubes are surrounded by poured concrete or roadway material. They should resemble a lane marker, without paint, in the center of the roadway. For the early implementations of this system, a small slit must be provided which would open and close, perhaps with solenoids, when a vehicle is using (on top of) the roadway segment.
An essential design requirement in the PTL system is that the vehicles be propelled by the magnetic lanes themselves, not by their on-board motors, of whatever type. This of course would enable gigantic savings in non renewable fuels, as well as reduce our dependence on the proposed organic fuels, such as ethanol.
The roadway propulsion tube must remain closed to the elements at all times. If the tube were to be open to the weather and debris, it would surely result in traffic jams, literally, as vehicles are stuck on the debris or breakdowns occur due to the effect of weather on the roadway.
There is a way to provide for a mechanical contact with the roadway cable, and that is by way of removable panels on the roadway, covering the propulsion tube. When a vehicle moves over the tube, the mechanical grip opens the spring loaded panels, or servo motors pull open the panels at the exact time.
However, a better and more effective design would be to use magnetic contact pods for all vehicles, regardless of the propulsion method used in the PTL infrastructure. The same contact method would enable all vehicles to use varying types of infrastructure PTL lanes, whichever one is available in the city or region they are traveling on.
A magnetic contact pod consists of a superconducting "puck" placed on the on-board retrofit pack. It will levitate and seek the magnetic track provided in the PTL propulsion tube, thereby providing a force vector that will pull the vehicle in the right direction. If a HTS ( High Temperature Superconductor) contact pod is available, it can withstand higher temperatures without loosing it's cryogenic superconductivity. On board liquid nitrogen would provide the cooling for contact pods, which would be of about 3 cm in diameter.
The size and power of each contact pod would depend on the needs of the vehicles involved. The higher the magnetic traction power required, the larger and/or more powerful the THS superconducting contact pod needs to be. The mathematics behind superconducting magnets is well understood and can be computed.
All vehicles of a reasonable size can be retro-fit with a power pack that provides guidance and external power to the vehicle. All power packs must be capable of providing all of the power and guidance that a vehicle needs as it cruises down a PTL lane.
Since the PTL lanes are not ubiquitous, every vehicle must have a redundant back-up guidance and propulsion. This is an elegant way to say that all cars must run on whatever fuels them, with a human driver as they do now.
When a vehicle approaches a PTL lane that it can use, by reason of it's configuration, it can acquire the lane "tap" using an on-board computer guidance system. The guidance computer will accelerate the vehicle to the speed of the Mag_lane being acquired, and deploy the connecting pod from the power pack when it is feasible. In other words, the vehicle has to chase the PTL lane "tags" until it reaches one it can link up to. Once so linked, the on-board guidance computer takes over the control of the vehicle, since speed and direction are no longer an internal function, but rather a function of the PTL system itself.
For hybrid electric cars, the power pack will contain a resonant magnetic wireless power transducer [1] that will tap the necessary power from the roadway magnetic coils, tuned to the same magnetic resonance of about 10Mhz.
As any visitor to San Fransisco can attest, the most reliable transportation there is their famous Trolley cable car. Although this sounds humorous, this is not a bad solution, in places where kinetic energy is abundant. Steam power from nuclear or coal fired plants can be converted to steam, the steam can be used for heating, and the kinetic power can be used in a PTL lane.
A more elegant solution would involve the use of magnetic lining on the propulsion tube. If the cable itself is magnetized by applying a DC current to it, and the lining of the propulsion tube is of opposite frictional polarity, the cable will levitate within the tube, eliminating friction and reducing maintenance costs.
If the cable is made of a material that has high frictional electro-magnetic potential opposed to the rubber/silicone lining, huge amounts of frictional electricity could be generated, simply by allowing the cable to rub against the lining. The electric currents would be tapped by electrodes placed along the roadway, and collected into a cable on the SCADA tube.
In honor of Nicolas Telsa, a man whose influence on our modern world was immense. We can expand the San Fransisco concept to add magnetic stators to the propulsion tube to achieve a Linear Direct current Generator. As the cable is pulled along, the contact pod exites the magnetic fields produced in the stators or magnets attached to the sides of the tube, generating DC current. In fact, the entire system then becomes a DC Generator, which converts the kinetic energy of the steam or hydro powered power station to electricity, and, as a side benefit, is used to transport vehicles at moderate speeds along the roadways so equipped.
A Linear Electric line with a resonant magnetic coil along the side of the armature will generate a wireless electric current of sufficient strength (kw) to charge the batteries in a hybrid electric vehicle, or to be used in the "hotel" functions of a MagLev vehicle. A Resonant Electric Lane will enable all hybrid vehicles to charge their on-board batteries for off-line travel whenever they travel along the RES-Lane, enabling total electric hybrids to have a range that is limited only by the length of the infrastructure. The same resonant magnetic coils would provide electrical power to parked cars in people's work places and at their parking place at home.
If we were to substitute the cable cars with our own personal vehicle, be it a car, truck, SUV or any conveyance of similar size, we can see that this concept can well be applied to our own urgent needs.
Using the same armature, a Mag Lev lane can be created by adding magnetic coils beneath the road surface where the wheels would make contact with the roadway. In fact, the same roadway can be used even if the vehicle does not have Mag Lev capability, as will be the case for some extended period of time.
The vehicle will "surf" on the Low Frequency Magnetic Wave produced by the cols on the roadway, as current is applied to each segment in series, when the vehicle uses (is on top of) each coil segment.
Since the PTL system is centrally controlled, the speed of the Mag-Wave that is generated is under the control of the central traffic system, and can be modified according to the conditions on the roadway and/or any accidents that affect the PTL roadways.
The Intutrack is a patent for the use of magnetic coils that produce levitation in controlled transportation
Atlanta,
October 3, 2007
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1:
Efficient wireless non-radiative mid-range energy transfer
Aristeidis Karalis*, J.D. Joannopoulos, and Marin Soljacic
Center for Materials Science and Engineering and Research Laboratory of Electronics
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
2.Team claims midrange wireless energy transfer
R. Colin Johnson
EE Times,11/20/2006
3:The Power of Induction
Science News.org, July 21st, 2007; Vol.172 #3
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