Hi guys,
I'm going to give this a shot.
First of all, I am assuming that the plane is pressurized throughout.
We know/assume that in a 1-G environment that wheat(flexible structures) will provide damping to a system. I am assuming that this occurs in two ways:
-air resistance (higher the pressure/humidity the bigger the effect)
-the flexing of the stalk (this flexing absorbs energy from the system)
What effect does gravity play on this damping mechanism?
Will the damping be more or less profound (or neither) in a approximately Zero-G environment?
I am assuming that a crop aboard a space vehicle would eliminate certain frequencies of vibrations, and therefore, enhance reliability. Allowing this experiment to run in a microgravity setting would allow these assumptions to be proven True, or False.
Just a few ideas on the way home from work, feel free to argue or support these ideas.
Jla
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2 comments:
I'll be interested to see what the results are in microgravity. My initial thoughts are that neither the vibration nor damping effect of the wheat will change (gravity is factored out of the system equations anyway). Though, I'm not sure if these equations still hold true in an environment where weight is effectively zero. But, as you said, running this experiment in microgravity will allow us to prove/disprove our initial assumptions.
Interesting to know.
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