Finding out total energy used by a motor

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Finding out total energy used by a motor

Postby tadietz » Thu Aug 02, 2012 11:21 pm

I decided to model various circular objects rolling down a conveyor belt that is moving uphill. I wanted to see if I could cause the objects to remain stationary from a viewer's POV by accelerating the conveyor belt gradually to keep up with the various objects' tendency to accelerate downhill due to gravity. I found two approaches that work.

Adjusting either torque or RPM during the runs can get you to the desired state. Setting the RPM high and the torque low but increasing torque slowly during the run, or setting the torque high and RPM low but increasing the RPM slowly during the run both work. Either way allows me to keep the object rolling downhill stationary with respect to the observer for quite a while if I'm careful with sliders for the motor or use lasers and Thyme scripting to increase things gradually enough

Algodoo let's you set and find out tons of information about various scene objects' properties before and during a simulation, but one thing I was curious about that I can't seem to get a bead on is the total energy the motor has applied to the system up to whatever point I decide to stop it using either approach I described above. All I seem to have to go on with respect to the motor's parameters is the motor RPM and the torque, both of which I adjust as described above so I am at a loss as how to calculate the total energy input to the system (i.w., used by the motor) during a run.

Is there a way - knowing all the masses of the objects, speeds of rotation of the rolling objects and belt, time spent in the run, RPM and torque of the motor, etc. - that I can calculate the energy used by the motor up to the point I pause/stop things? I have poked around here and other places but didn't find anything obvious - although I could have used the wrong search arguments. Any help is appreciated.
tadietz
 
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