Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Michelle Broyles’ presentation is both a technical update and a tribute to Dr. James F. Woodward. She opens by dedicating the talk to Woodward after his death in August, framing the work as the continuation of a decades-long effort to test whether transient mass fluctuations in a driven piezoelectric system can produce a real, directional thrust. She presents the Woodward or Mach-effect idea in its simplest form: if inertia is relational and tied to the mass-energy of the universe, then rapidly cycling internal energy in a device might let it couple to that larger gravitational background and generate propulsive force without expelling reaction mass.
From there, Broyles explains the basic “MEGA” device architecture used by the team. The core setup is a pre-stressed stack of eight PZT discs with asymmetric end masses, typically aluminum on one side and brass on the other, driven in the tens-of-kilohertz range. As the stack “breathes” in and out, she says the asymmetry and timing of the mass fluctuations can produce a net directional force. She repeatedly uses the “man in a canoe” analogy: ordinary internal oscillation should only rock a system back and forth without translating it, so any sustained motion of the full apparatus is what she treats as the key signal of interest.
A major part of the talk compares two experimental environments. One is the long-running Cal State Fullerton vacuum-chamber torsion-beam setup used by the Woodward group. The other is Broyles’ own newer lab system built around a frictionless air bearing and a sealed polycarbonate enclosure designed to reduce stick-slip, air-flow artifacts, and other mechanical ambiguities. She emphasizes that the enclosure lets the device oscillate internally while making it easier to distinguish simple Newtonian action-reaction motion from motion of the whole assembly. In her telling, this second setup was meant to give a cleaner, more direct way to see whether the device only shakes itself or actually accelerates the surrounding structure.
Broyles then walks through several test runs. In one air-bearing experiment, she says a frequency sweep from roughly 35 to 40 kHz initially showed only small oscillations until the device hit resonance, at which point the whole assembly began accelerating in one direction. Because the system was lightly centered with polyester thread, it accelerated for several seconds, pulled the tether taut, held position briefly, and then relaxed as the sweep moved out of resonance. She reports a thrust estimate of about 275 millinewtons for that run. In another configuration using Woodward’s bearing-mounted assembly inside her sealed tube, she reports a smaller but still positive measured thrust of about 2.8 millinewtons.
One of the most important claims in the presentation is her reanalysis of older Fullerton data. Broyles argues that relying only on torsion-arm deflection can be misleading because deflection may also come from slip-stick motion, bearing loading, spring compression, and related mechanical effects. To address that, she says she reprocessed a 2022 run using video tracking, center-of-mass calculations, and total-momentum analysis that included known masses, spring effects, bearing behavior, and friction terms. According to her presentation, this changed the group’s interpretation of where the force was actually occurring in the cycle and led to inferred forces ranging from the milliNewton level up to Newton-scale peaks, including an average smoothed force around 8 Newtons in one analysis. She presents this as a strong cross-check between the Fullerton system and her own air-bearing work.
The final technical section focuses on harmonics and device tuning. Broyles argues that the key is not just sweeping frequency broadly, but identifying a narrow operating window where the second- and fourth-order harmonics are strong while the third harmonic is minimized. In the data she shows, she identifies a thrust sweet spot around 37.427 kHz, where even harmonics peak, third-order losses are reduced, and power consumption can fall to roughly 1–2 watts. Her next step is to stop doing wide sweeps and instead hold the device at that narrow resonant point while driving it with an amplitude-modulated impulse waveform.
In plain English, the presentation says three things. First, Broyles believes Woodward’s original concept still shows measurable promise. Second, she thinks better instrumentation and post-processing are changing where the team believes the real thrust signal resides. Third, the work is moving from broad exploratory sweeps toward tighter harmonic control, lower-power operation, and more repeatable impulse-style tests. The talk is also clearly meant as a statement that Woodward’s collaborators intend to keep the research alive and refine it rather than let it end with him.
Michelle Broyles’ presentation is both a technical update and a tribute to Dr. James F. Woodward. She opens by dedicating the talk to Woodward after his death in August, framing the work as the continuation of a decades-long effort to test whether transient mass fluctuations in a driven piezoelectric system can produce a real, directional thrust. She presents the Woodward or Mach-effect idea in its simplest form: if inertia is relational and tied to the mass-energy of the universe, then rapidly cycling internal energy in a device might let it couple to that larger gravitational background and generate propulsive force without expelling reaction mass.
From there, Broyles explains the basic “MEGA” device architecture used by the team. The core setup is a pre-stressed stack of eight PZT discs with asymmetric end masses, typically aluminum on one side and brass on the other, driven in the tens-of-kilohertz range. As the stack “breathes” in and out, she says the asymmetry and timing of the mass fluctuations can produce a net directional force. She repeatedly uses the “man in a canoe” analogy: ordinary internal oscillation should only rock a system back and forth without translating it, so any sustained motion of the full apparatus is what she treats as the key signal of interest.
A major part of the talk compares two experimental environments. One is the long-running Cal State Fullerton vacuum-chamber torsion-beam setup used by the Woodward group. The other is Broyles’ own newer lab system built around a frictionless air bearing and a sealed polycarbonate enclosure designed to reduce stick-slip, air-flow artifacts, and other mechanical ambiguities. She emphasizes that the enclosure lets the device oscillate internally while making it easier to distinguish simple Newtonian action-reaction motion from motion of the whole assembly. In her telling, this second setup was meant to give a cleaner, more direct way to see whether the device only shakes itself or actually accelerates the surrounding structure.
Broyles then walks through several test runs. In one air-bearing experiment, she says a frequency sweep from roughly 35 to 40 kHz initially showed only small oscillations until the device hit resonance, at which point the whole assembly began accelerating in one direction. Because the system was lightly centered with polyester thread, it accelerated for several seconds, pulled the tether taut, held position briefly, and then relaxed as the sweep moved out of resonance. She reports a thrust estimate of about 275 millinewtons for that run. In another configuration using Woodward’s bearing-mounted assembly inside her sealed tube, she reports a smaller but still positive measured thrust of about 2.8 millinewtons.
One of the most important claims in the presentation is her reanalysis of older Fullerton data. Broyles argues that relying only on torsion-arm deflection can be misleading because deflection may also come from slip-stick motion, bearing loading, spring compression, and related mechanical effects. To address that, she says she reprocessed a 2022 run using video tracking, center-of-mass calculations, and total-momentum analysis that included known masses, spring effects, bearing behavior, and friction terms. According to her presentation, this changed the group’s interpretation of where the force was actually occurring in the cycle and led to inferred forces ranging from the milliNewton level up to Newton-scale peaks, including an average smoothed force around 8 Newtons in one analysis. She presents this as a strong cross-check between the Fullerton system and her own air-bearing work.
The final technical section focuses on harmonics and device tuning. Broyles argues that the key is not just sweeping frequency broadly, but identifying a narrow operating window where the second- and fourth-order harmonics are strong while the third harmonic is minimized. In the data she shows, she identifies a thrust sweet spot around 37.427 kHz, where even harmonics peak, third-order losses are reduced, and power consumption can fall to roughly 1–2 watts. Her next step is to stop doing wide sweeps and instead hold the device at that narrow resonant point while driving it with an amplitude-modulated impulse waveform.
In plain English, the presentation says three things. First, Broyles believes Woodward’s original concept still shows measurable promise. Second, she thinks better instrumentation and post-processing are changing where the team believes the real thrust signal resides. Third, the work is moving from broad exploratory sweeps toward tighter harmonic control, lower-power operation, and more repeatable impulse-style tests. The talk is also clearly meant as a statement that Woodward’s collaborators intend to keep the research alive and refine it rather than let it end with him.
