there was abit of wind today so i decided to do some wind testing...it was dissapointing, partly because my voltage regulator for powering 5V usb devices only actually outputs 4.5v , and in any case i dont have alot of things to plug into it anyway... but the main reason is that it seems that there needs to be more wind than i expect to overcome the cogging
due to the flux coupling between the main and counter-rotating rotor via the coils' iron cores, cogging is inevitable... here is a source of inefficiency of a levitating alternator, as the rapid changes in angular momentum would send energy via the imperfect mass, geometric and magnetic balance of the rotors into the imperfectly rigid support to be absorbed...
the cogging can be mitigated at high angular velocities by increasing the angular inertia of the counter-rotating rotor i.e. by adding weights to the outside perimeter of the rotor...... since both the rotors' movements are coupled, the smoother the movement of the counter-rotator, the smoother too the movement of the entire wind turbine...
in effect it is 'dampening' the cogging, the reason that the lower rotor counter-rotates is because it is constantly settling into the lowest mechanical and magnetic flux energy state, and this is the same reason why cogging happens... but if the rotor has increased kinetic energy (due to increased mass) , the energy difference due to magnetic flux will be less significant in its movements... if you slow down the secondary rotor, it will cause a torque to slow down the primary rotor, and vice versa if you speed it up... so during a cog, the added angular inertia of the secondary rotor would cancel out more of the sudden speedups and slowdowns... this is also why the wind turbine can 'work through' the cogging by spinning faster, but having a heavier secondary rotor will reduce the post-cogging RPM, and reduce energy loss to structural vibrations
but adding more angular inertia isnt going to help if you are starting from no angular momentum, and the cogging is simply stopping your turbine from turning in the first palce... this would require a fundemental rework of the coupling between the primary and secondary rotors
the lowest energy, least-repulsion state when you overlay a square (the top rotor's 12 magnets divided by 3) over a pentagon (5 phases, 15 coils divided by 3) and a hexagon (the lower rotor's 18 magnets divided by 3) , in both cases, is when the square sits upright... in effect , the wind turbine would tend to 'drag' the alternator and the lower rotor together in circles, this was why i had to tie the alternator's wire to another spike in the ground
the square's vertices would be at 45, 135, 225 and 315 degrees, and the vertices of the pentagon will be at 0, 72, 144, 216, and 288 degrees... since we are trying to minimize the cogging between the primary rotor and the stator, they are what we will focus on
as you can see, the lower corners of both polygons are the closest to each other, with a difference of 9 degrees, hence provide the shortest pathway out of the cogging
i am thinking of splitting each of the pentagon's vertices into a pair of vertices, offset +9 and -9 degrees from the original vertex, basically having 2 pentagons offset by 18 degrees ...the coupling works by the attraction between the pentagon and the square, so by spreading the attraction to cover the gap between the primary rotor and stator, maybe the cogging can be reduced ... basically, on each coil, rather than the single iron protrusion in the middle as i have now (see
https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/561840_10150877241271197_502061196_11576004_1032166382_n.jpg), there should be a pair of protrusions at 3 / 8ths and 5 / 8ths of the length of the coil
