Infinitesimal bearing

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APM in T.Level III may enable us to create a new type of macroscopic bearings in the form of a passive metamaterial.

From classic to infinitesimal bearings. More layers reduce the relative speed differences. The result has lower friction and higher damage tolerance.
A small demo stack of building blocks for a relative speed distributing metamaterial.

To reduce the relative speed of two surfaces one stacks many layers with minimal thickness (each layer un-percievably small - thus "infinitesimal"). Just enough to accommodate some necessary nanomechanics. Those nanomechanics are DMME gears (not bearings) and further structure that make sure that every layer takes the same part of the total speed difference. Note that due to superlubrication a single layer can take well perceivable macroscopic speeds without being destroyed thus bearings replacing todays macroscopic ones will need to use only a very thin stack of infinitesimal bearing layers. Since there's no static friction and very low speed dependent dynamic friction in diamondoid nanomechanics (see superlubrication) the bearings efficiency can be expected to be exceptional.

It is to investigate how a macroscopic infinitesimal bearing performs relative to nanoscopic DMME bearing and how long an infinitesimal brearing of certain size would turn till it e.g. reaches half its initial speed.

As in all products of advanced nanosystems the nanomechanics must (through their structure) provide some redundancy making the design more complicated
[TODO add more detailed Model]

[TODO: design a makro model structure for demonstration]

Cheating on a scaling law

Doubling the number of layers

  • halves the speed which quaters the dynamic frictio
  • doubles the surface area which doubles friction
  • thus in combination it halves friction


Related AP metamaterials

Adding chemomechanical or electromechanical motors into the layers changes it into an interfacial drive (an active metamaterial). There the add-up of layer movement acts as one of the methods to accumulate nano motion to macroscopic levels (mechanical macroscopification).