Right, re-ran the sim at 10,000 integration steps / frame, and
refined the input energy figure - the integral of force * velocity * time has pretty much converged with that of torque * angle:
Motor T*w*t = 261.4607647 J
Motor T*a = 261.5542733 J
..so it seems plausible that 261.5 J of input work has been performed during the run.. (anyone disagree?)
The T*a integral for the brake however appears to be in error:
Brake T*a = 466.3682955 J
So a big increase has been caused by raising the number of integration steps per frame. This is confirmed by re-running the sim at just 10 i-s/f:
Brake T*a = 14.83823855 J
..so, bollocks to taking T*a plots from rotational dampers - you'd
think it was the most logical way to construct a brake, but they produce crap data, apparently..
Still works
mechanically as a brake tho - remember, all it's there for is to accomplish an 'inelastic collision' - that is, equalising the speed of the two co-rotating parts, redistributing their momentum by speeding one up, at the expense of slowing the other down. Net momentum's conserved, and the two parts can thus begin the next cycle relatively stationary to one another, and so beginning at the bottom of the 'V²' multiplier on the energy cost of accumulating momentum..
..besides,
'two checks on everything', right? We don't need no stinkin' T*a integral just to confirm what we've already plainly seen in the KE plot - each collision dissipates 25 J precisely!
And, there's
ten of them, in consecutive sequence..
..10 * 25 J = 250 J, does it not? Ie. each collision reduced the system KE by 25 J, and there were ten
of them, so.. seems pretty unequivocal that 250 J of heat must've been produced..
..
unless, this form of KE loss is actually
non-dissipative; a 'non-dissipative' mechanical energy loss is the inverse of a gain - arse end of the same phenomenon - but friction brakes are the quintessential
essence of 'dissipative' loss mechanisms - there's no question brakes get hot, type situation, so... umm... nope sorry, i can't see a way out, here..
The system
definitely produced 250 J of heat...
...plus a final KE of 151.9775 J, up from an initial float of 96.1704 J - an increase of 55.8071 J...
..so total system energy rise was 305.8071 J. That's how much work was done.
By 261.5 J of input energy.
305.8 / 261.5 = 1.17x unity.
No change in GPE.
This
looks real..
..as in, if you
wanted a free-energy thermal plant, able to power itself whilst providing constant output power... you could totally have one right now (i hereby christen it 'B-cat', all rights reserved etc.)..
Shouldn't be too hard to capture the same gain in the form of sprung PE rather than friction heating, tho.. likewise, maybe applying a 'generator' in place of the brake - should do the same job mechanically, conserving the net momentum, whilst producing a clean T*a integral, and directly recouping the 25 J per cycle..
If it
is real, then the primary gain condition has to be divergence of the motor's inertial frame, and the gain will be directly proportionate to the net momentum increase - ie. from cheating the
V² multiplier on the input-energy cost of accumulating that momentum.
The most obvious starting point here would seem to be to take hi-res sims of the sequence one, single, cycle at a time, to see if the input work / energy is indeed constant per cycle, and to check this per-cycle input energy against the per-cycle KE rise.. does the 44.3 J gain accumulate at equal increments per cycle, or are they
increasing with system velocity?