Hey all! Thanks for watching, and to Curiosity Stream for supporting this video. Update: Turns out thrust is much lower than 44 grams. Chat GPT was fairly accurate - but my rusty ability to convert Newtons to grams of force definitely slipped. I'll update this comment when i test it physically. Check out Joel's ionic thrusters here: www.youtube.com/@integza My last BSI thruster here: ruclips.net/video/yftKjkZHirc/видео.html Peter Sripol's channel here: ruclips.net/channel/UC7yF9tV4xWEMZkel7q8La_w
Your design is not even remotely scalable. Every edge or opening is a increase in drag. You need to make each motor it's own aerofoil in a multi blade wing design to have any chance.
Keep in mind, ur working older technology. current level of ionic propulsion is super conducting ionic propulsion and plasma emission. it is X 10 X 10 the thrust output compared to non superconducting. using cvd based graphene material
Man! this is beautiful... Let's see if Joel can one up you now! And to answer your last question... probably NO! Sorry, but I don't see this being an efficient way to fly! Issue is to get very high airflow I expect there to be exponentially high electrical waste. Doesn't mean these efforts are useless. not only the science coming out of these experiments could lead to new breakthroughs, but also, this would already make a great space heater that kills 99.9% of the airborne germs too!! 😁
@ElectroBOOM i love what's been going on in this series. i dunno if thrust per watt hour is the best way to judge, but i have a feeling in the end, it'll be really cool, but perhaps not competitive. and i am a-ok with that B-) hehehe
WEIGHT REDUCTION IDEAS: My dad and I used to build model airplanes you should like into using balsa wood and wax paper for the skin. Also replace those metal bolts with nylon bolts if you can! Finally 3d prints are a lot stronger thann your design is giving them credit for! Make your parts thickness .4 or .6 mm! Use 2 or 3 layers of walls. If your part has enough room for support material you can definitely reduce weight. Good luck!! If you want some help reach out!
@@PlasmaChannel Also please try to contact with Tom Stanton, he perform experiments with plane which powered by pressured air. He know a lot about how properly to reduce a weight.
The thing that I like the most about these videos is how you highlight the trail and error process. Not simply just showing a completed working project. It emphasizes the importance of building good habits and consistently improving/building upon the prior iterations.
You know, people say that this will not be a workable propulsion system, but what ionic propulsion may allow, is an almost drag-free aircraft. If the ionic system is in the correct location and configuration, such as somewhere around the front of the wings, high-pressure areas could conceivably be eliminated.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car. Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
I was going to suggest this. I print all of my planes in lw pla strengthened with carbon rods. I can usually achieve 40% weight reduction over the pla versions taking into account the carbon rods. I'd suggest to look into Tom Stanton's videos on his second channel on how to design a wing around printing in lw pla. I'd also plan around using the body style of a Discus launch glider to reduce the weight and streamline it as much as possible
Tom Stanton made a great video on optimizing a 3d printed wing on his second channel. The video can be found here ruclips.net/video/QJjhMan6T_E/видео.htmlsi=h2qctI5dOLai09HS. The cad process is slightly different but it looks like it works quite well.
Lets lose some weight! How about this, the skin can be wax paper for now. Could the ion assembly be reduced to a hot wire grounding to gold leaf affixed to the skin of the wing? If serrations are ideal, painters tape can be cut to make the serrations, apply the gold leaf to the wax paper, peel away the tape and voila. A series of wires to grounding bands on the wing itself may doubly improve keeping air flow right at the surface of the wing? The next trick is the elevation of the wire from the wing? would one milimeter be enough/too much? So much fun to be had on this project. I subbed to keep up to date you your progress! Oh, and you may have to move to a fog machine as dry ice can only do so much, and watching flow over the wing is so important at this phase.
The problem with this stuff is it's super brittle. There is this Formfutura PP that is better IMO and also about the same weight. And you don't have to fuss with getting the foaming right.
regarding the ionic wing, it occurs to me that maybe we’re thinking too macro. That is, the electrons accelerating the air molecules is all happening at an extremely microscopic scale. Therefore the system to accelerate them optimally should be designed this way. That is, building a kind of 3d lattice (like a potato dicer with channels for the air), where each channel is scaled in width and height according to flow and turbulence. In the length dimension (along the axis of flow), the distance between subsequent “accelerators” can be very very small. So somehow 3d printing a “dicer” (or printing layers then coating them using electroplating) could be a useful approach. I’ve done a preliminary analysis, and. It seems that an ionic engine with this 3D lattice design could be very powerful. I’ve emailed it to Jay. Anyway very fun to think about!
The easiest way to drop mass is to buy foaming agent infused PLA. You can adjust the amount of bubbles by changing nozzle temp (take care that it affects effective volumetric flow coming out of nozzle) Printing model airplanes is one of the main reason why that filament exists. Also redesigning your part to be printable in vase mode is also pretty important.
Here's the thing if he's able to successfully use three d printing to build something that flies. It leaves some engineering wiggle room for other designs.
Easiest way to go lighter is to remove 3d printing from the equation. Even LW-PLA is multiple times heavier than balsa and tissue/plastic or foam. I've built a couple of well designed (not my designs) 3D printed RC planes myself and they're just a curiosity. They're good looking and easy to build but they're very heavy and shatter into a million pieces with impacts that a foam plane would survive with good repairability.
Hi, Jay! Great challenge, great work! 🙂 Three suggestions for this project. First: You can place the wires lifted over the wing, but the surface of the HED thruster can be just an aluminum sheet glued to the surface of the wing itself. This can reduce drag, reduce weight and (possibly!) improve the laminar flow over the wing, which largely reduces skin drag. Consider electrodeposition of copper instead of aluminum sheets... would be even lighter and far less disruptive of airflow. Also consider placing wires on the trailing edge of an airfoil in order to avoid creating vortices (you are doing that already, in a sense). Second: You are thinking of a traditional "tube and wing" glider-like design, which is great, but a more modern solution would be a blended wing body (BWB). Since you are dealing with low speed flights, active stabilization should be far simpler than in the transonic speeds we see in military BWB aircraft, if needed at all. That will give you far more lift and thus far greater flight autonomy. Also, the batteries and HV generators would be sitting on a surface of the plane that generates lift, giving you far less need for structural strength in your wings, translating into a bit less weight overal (and every 10 grams count in your case...). Remember: gliders carry no heavy equipment and that is why their extra long wings can be so light - they need little reinforcement for structural integrity. Third: You are entering the wonderful realm of active flow control, which is an area that has seen a lot of research lately. Consider using a few of those thrusters under the area near the tips of the wings also and making that area a little "fat" at the trailing edge, so that the Coanda effect will give you "up" and "down" control authority on the wings (as you change the ratio of flow between the upper trhuster and the lower thruster) and you will not have to use (in this case, heavy) servos and control surfaces for controlling youraircraft. In your case, the idea is substituting ailerons for the differential in force between two thrusters, one over the wing and descending because of the Coanda effect, and the other under the wing and ascending for the same reason. Hope it helps. 😉 PS: Dear Integza (Joel), feel invited! 🤣
The solar powered Zephyr is the current record holder for long range unmanned flight and it’s airframe structure is an assembly of thin-walled composite tubes made from high-modulus carbon fibre in epoxy resin. Wings and flight control surfaces are skinned with Mylar. Considering you need enough surface area to lift batteries you might be building a pretty large wing here. The materials above might be the answer
In addition to active flow control, this project is starting to enter the regime of the biplane. With some optimizing, the ionic thrust segment could be a factor in generating lift. The aerodynamics between the segments and the wing could effectively cancel out any added gain from a bi-plane setup, however it would allow you to shrink the wingspan of the vehicle by a margin that may help with weight. Additionally, with the vehicle having (effectively) blown lift surfaces (similar to that of the C-17) you'll immediately see some gains from the intake of air from the surroundings similar to a dyson bladeless fan.
@@GriffithJones That is an idea, indeed. I suggest you place it in the main responses, so that Jay (the owner of the channel) can see it. Now, it is just a reply to my comment. ;)
Thats funny because when you confront any of the so called "experts" they contemptuously call you "RUclips experts-youtube scientist" they systematically despise RUclips, not realizing that It is the modern library of Alexandria.
the ionic wind generated by the previous electrode is being obstructed by the electrode next to it, the improved version sorts the problem a bit but still the obstruction happens. so instead of using multiple modules right next to each other, you can use two long modules throughout a vast area of the wing. i hope that may improve the weight to thrust ratio.
Alternatively one could follow in the footsteps of an MIT project from 2018 and stack the linear ion thruster modules on top of each other instead of behind each.
exactly, the old design worked because there was very little obstruction, and one module feed the next. in this case each module is too obstructive. but if he replaces the razor blade with a wire maybe this problem will solve itself.
@@plower221 If points matter, then going with carbon fiber would be a good way to go. There's a certain kind of ion air purifier that see big Clive show and tear into and it uses carbon fiber strands to create a lot of ions.
@@plower221 I'd be interested to test the impact of electrode width, ground width and gap between the two. Seems like could save some weight using wire instead of serrated blade. Just strip small amounts of insulation to create the points instead.
3D printing with foaming/lightweight/aero PLA will save a lot of weight on your printed parts, around 65%. It's PLA with a foaming agent so when it extrudes it expands at a known amount and ends up being less dense. It's used primarily for printing drone components.
this or simply just switching to abs or PP which are significantly lighter than PLA. Although those filaments can be quite difficult to print accurately
Needs a simpler wing all together tbh, I would be looking at things like man powered flight and follow the "straight" wing design (carbon fiber). Wings create lift by making low pressure system behind the leading edge over the trailing edge essentially turning thrust into lift, above the wing... not below! thats where your lift comes from thats why the tear drop shape. He hasnt got the thrust to ever make that shape an effective wing. He needs a cutting wing... a straight wing. ALSO... he will need to move the thrust off the wings, i hope he highlights why next one but i can see the fundamental problem hes making already. Think propeller planes, surface area, and thrust positions. Have a safe and happy new year.
I genuinely love when science and tech channels fight to make the better tech. It's like a mini war like the space race. They keep trying to one up each other making it better and better.
I love how these "war" bring out more innovations than single handed projects, I am following you both. Lets just say Integza takes the cake for being hilarious at some point his editing and style of the content he creates is amazing. To each their charm I love you both keep going, I am on the edge of my seat the whole time!!
I love seeing creators collab. This is the meaning of humanity: Combining our individual ideas and specialties to accomplish our awesome and lofty goals.
this is incredible imagine what the world would be like if it wasnt controlled by corporations and individuals such as this were alllowed to express their ingenuity
We need wayyyyy more of this throughout the science community(ies) ....for years, I've watched documentaries, miniseries, etc. and then also people in your position, who are building things to see what'll happen and then refining from there, and actually committing to the experiment 150% (like seriously, how many times did you go back to the 3D printer in this video alone?) , and on that note, also utilizing modern tech IN PRACTICE, rather than just spouting hypotheses and equations at us. I have to say, this is the first time I've sat here, entirely captivated the entire time, to see the outcome....hell even sat here through the sponsorship part, which I almost never do (because ads), and will likely end up on Curiosity soon....and then also subbed after only seeing one video from someone.
Unfortunately until people understand the full impact of a digital age ,there wont be too much of this. Many fail to realize something gamers got off the bat. That the modern age allows you to grow a rivalry that improves both parties . If more people of any background acted like these two regardless if nationality there would be alot more advancement over all.
This is my favorite type of tech video because it constantly evolves and adapts to improve. This is why I think Peter’s videos are also incredible. The teacher is learning along with the student (viewers) and the real teacher is experience. I’m pretty sure Peter knows some of the questions he poses to the camera but through practical application we get to learn scientific principles. Great job! I would love to see this work!
Great work on the propulsion, and it looks like your propulsion units actually help create lift. Using more tradition "model plane" building techniques, i.e balsa or thin foam instead of 3d printed might help save even more weight Bit worried about the drag you'll end up with though, especially on a full wing. I think drag tends to increase exponentially.
I understand that engineering something like this take time, but considering that you already have plans on improving this design, i realy want to see a new video on this soon. Absolutely amazing and fun video!
super cool design, awesome to see you talk with Peter about the wing design. there's another youtuber I've been watching, Tom Stanton who's been making super light wight wings for an air powered plane. might be worth looking his stuff for ideas on how to create some really light wings
I *suspect* a more efficient design might be to use the the body of the wing as the "duct" of a sort of "ducted plasma fan." If the leading edge of the wing is the high-voltage conductor, you could move air through the wing to produce the thrust, while also gaining the benefit of a wing as a lifting body, even if angle of attack never factors into your generation of lift. I could (obviously) be wrong, but I wanted to mention the idea anyway, in case it can be of use.
I completely agree, I believe the config reaction will not produce lift. The air travelling slower over the top of the wing generates lift. The thrusters are speeding up the air. Has more chance of working if they were under the wing or integrated into it like you suggested. I don't know much about ion thrusters, but I know that propeller efficiency has a lot to do with each blade getting as much clean air as possible undisturbed by the previous blade as it's rotating. Im wondering if having the ion thrusters trailing one another affects efficiency in the same way. By the time the air is reaching the fourth thruster I can only imagine it would be incredibly choppy air. Can the thrusters be stacked? I believe a single larger, more powerful thruster would be more efficient and effective to integrate into a wing. I have experimented a lot with wind turbines although not an expert, I understand that airflow is a highly complex concept that can sometimes be counterintuitive. Love the videos and concepts you are creating. Keep it up. I've had a concept in my head for something I call a magnetic vortex compression drive. Videos like yours make me realise I should put concept into practise instead of fear of failure.
Jay, look at using an aluminum door screen mesh for the electrode instead of the blades. Huge weight reduction, awesome conductivity and the wind it produces is super impressive. It'll do what you're looking at with the serrated blades, but has way more points when you trim the mesh. Tested it last night and it works great.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car. Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
You are one of the maybe 5 channels that continuously keep me absolutely stoked about anything related to aerospace. You are part to thanks for my interest in aerospace and hopefully career in such too. After this senior year of high school I plan on going to college for mechanical engineering, with the hopes of working on anything plane related. Maybe even designing my own planes.
Could you use a metal foil plastic like a mylar foil 'space blanket' as electrodes & ground planes? That would REALLY cut down on weight as it could also double as the wing surface 😁
@@petevenuti7355What if one of the trailing electrodes was an aluminum tape or electroplate on the surface of the wing itself? Small surface defects caused by the tape edges could damage the boundary layer flow, so I'm Really suggesting electroplating. An electroplated wing surface could reduce the weight and pull the boundary layer more tightly to the surface.
Very excited to see this. Great idea to use the wing as part of the thrust. That was brilliant. I did notice that you are putting the ion thrusters on top of the wing. This may led to a few problems if you do plan to fly it. The aerodynamics of the top part of the curved wing makes the air above the wing move faster. This also thins the air on top which creates in imbalance of air pressure. the thicker air below pushes the wing up, creating lift. Placing the ion thrusters on top would: 1. Slow the flow of air weakening the lift. 2. The airflow on top of the wing is thinner and less efficient. Respectfully, I would recommend that you put the ion thrusters on the bottom of the wing. This would: 1. Take advantage of the thicker air below the wing. 2. Not interfere with the thinner air on top. It might even led to move lift. I hope that you find this useful and good luck on your build. Respectfully William.
This is awesome :D. If you want to decrase weight even more, try LA-PLA. It will foam up during printing and it's about 45% the weight of regular PLA. You could also use a wing section of 3dlab print's Piper Cub. Printed in LW-PLA they weight aroung 20g each. If printed with the right settings the whole plane will weight less than 300g (just the material)
it might be a good idea to mount the ionic thruster layers inside the wing and use the air that has been accelerated to replace the boundary flow layer with each stage. That way you could reduce drag by ensuring laminar flow and not having a large structure sticking up out of the wing. That would reduce the amount of thrust you need to generate in order to make something fly.
@@vuibulevbaoultch8727 The ion thruster mounted on top of the wing is already a bit like that. I was thinking more like an ionic thruster version of the Northrop X-21 boundary flow control system.
yeah, the way this is structured, and crosswind or turbulence will interfere with the thrust, not just the lift. i could think of it looking a little like a skylon engine acrooss the whole surface of the wing.
@@sorejack Yes, it certainly could be structured that way. You mean the rim of ramjets that go around the outside of the SABER engine but along the wing right? Turbulence between the boundary flow and upper layers is the problem. So accelerating the boundary flow layer would either reduce or invert that. I was thinking of something integrated into the structure of the wing so that it has the drag and lift characteristics of a normal wing when off. but produces both lift and trust whilst reducing drag when turned on.
In the novel I am writing, there is a "surface air acceleration technology" applied to sailing ships. Your design actually turned my fantasy into reality. Such wind speed may be too low for an aircraft, but it is completely sufficient for a sail. A wind speed of 4 meters per second is approximately 6 knots. That's enough for the sailboat to sail normally. great!
Suggestion. Right now, it seems the bottleneck will be reducing mass to decrease the stress on the engines. But I feel like we could use this to our advantage. What if you built it as a biplane. More wings, more surface area, but if you use 3d printed plastic, not much in weight increase.
Not even a biplane, think about it like the airfoil on a powered paraglider. Basically two wings made of thin material on top of one another to create lift. If you sandwiched them between two layers of airfoils (the top maybe with some ducts to enable airflow?), you could reduce the size.
@@promess This is basically what I just thought of, too. Like a micro-biplane wing with the ionic thrust generated between the sections of wing. I'm curious as to whether it'd be better to basically split the airfoil just above the nose, and split the tail edge (tiny bit of rake)? as 2 full airfoils would be pretty draggy, but so would the split lip on the front most likely. Not an engineer, don't mind me if I'm dumb.
He may as well go even further than this, going all the way to a Handley-Page style multi element wing for more lift with lower velocity charles-oneill.com/aem614/ReferenceMaterial/A+M+O+Smith+HIGH+LIFT+AERODYNAMICS.pdf
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car. Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
It’s criminal you’re under 1mil subs. Your designs are top tier, and your videos are fantastically produced. I genuinely believe you could change the industry with this. Always love when you upload!
I agree, unfortunately it's a side effect of not posting very often. It's the downside to spending so much time and energy on each video. They come out great but makes the channel grow slow.
@dalebob9364 I'd agree that revolutionazing the aeronautic industry is a bit far fetched for sure. But give the guy some credit, even if "just" makes an RC airplane with this design, it'd be nice and actually innovative. Not like some other *popular science* channels who are just milking their: vacuum chambers, liquid nitrogen, kinetic sand, oobleck, 3D printers and other things that are already well figured out to get views (aka. Steve Mould). This guy has a goal that requires real thought and engineering work. Just like Tom Stanton's air powered plane isn't going to be the next big thing in aerospace, but hell he optimized the shit out of it. Not just anyone with a couple of available tools and a nice camera can do that. There is a huge difference between channels that demonstrate sciency stuff and these design/engineering journey channels. If nothing else, they manage to demonstrate that every hobbyist with some dedication can make use of today's technologies like 3D printing to create some really cool stuff. Just more power to the people.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car. Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
This is the best part of RUclips. It’s amazing how my favorite RUclipsrs always end up working together. Always looking forward to seeing your designs.
Great job! During 12:10 you demonstrated airflow through the thrusters. A place where drag is crucial. I think you should take inspiration from F1 cars(pre 2022) for this. They had elements (or sticky uppy bits as Sam Collin would say in his tech talk breakdowns) that countour the airflow throughout the body. Monza GP setups have the most slippery/least downforce spec cars for reference. Looking forward for the next version of this.
You are making this old mans mind explode with "what if's " . Love it. Makes me want to try making back up things , like a thrust dyno for such small scale projects. 👻
Great work! I think weight can be reduced by attaching one of the two halves of the split ground directly to the wing , maybe as a metal strip embedded in the wing itself. Should also reduce the drag.
Are two grounds necessary, could there not be a benefit from streamlining the flow and remove one of them while directly integrating the remaining one smoothly into the wing. Arguably the same could be done for the electrodes allowing for laminar flow.
I'm an engineer myself and I find your videos fascinating. The issue with applying this to a full size airplane is obviously going to be the power source. Batteries just weigh too much for it to be useful. A better solution would be to use a small turbine generator to generate the electrical power required. It would still use fuel, but it would be no where near what the requirement is for current turbofan jet engines. An added benefit to this is as the fuel is consumed, the weight of the plane becomes lighter. Additionally, a small battery pack could be used to provide emergency power in case the main turbine fails. Currently, airliners have something known as an APU or Auxiliary Power Unit that is used to provide electrical and hydraulic power to the plane's systems if the engines fail. This is what happened in Jan 2010 when a plane landed in the Hudson River in New York. Captain Sully switched on the APU to keep the plane's systems working which significantly contributed to the positive outcome of the incident. So a plane that uses this setup could be equipped with just an oversized APU to provide main power with a battery pack in case of emergencies if the APU fails. The battery pack could be sized to provide 10-20 minutes of flight time. Even longer if reduced thrust is used. Overall, this would reduce the amount of pollution in the aviation industry. One of the issues with this system is that water conducts electricity. So rain/snow/ice could be an issue with the conductive components and cause short circuits reducing the available thrust and possibly damaging the power converter.
this was absoulutely beautiful! I loved watching the process and can not wait to see this unfold. Seeing the way you work through the set backs and used them as fuel to improve was so satisfying.
I would recommend trying to measure the static pressure on top of the airfoil either mechanically or in a computer wind tunnel simulation. The pressure on top of the airfoil needs to be lower than the bottom of the airfoil, which may not be the case having the thrusters along the top of the whole wing. If you have a high pressure on to the wing will create downwards force and you’d have to rely solely on the angle of attack to create a higher pressure under the wing, instead of the foil. Also something that I thought of, is to make sure the average vector of the thrust air flow is parallel with the chord of the wing, as to not induce any separations of the air flow away from the curve of the air foil. Although with a setup like this, there’s a unique opportunity to play around with adjusting the vector of each stage of the thruster to be angled to force air perpendicular to the tangent of the curve (the Normal Line) of the airfoil at each stage. Forcing airflow over the wing in a setup like this could theoretically make an almost unstallable wing, as the airflow can never fully separate as long as there’s power. Also on a separate note, I had the idea of smashing copper wire with a hammer to flatten it out, and creating a razor like edge with the weight savings and improved conductivity of copper wire.
If you put metallic tape on the bottom of the wing and charged the air beneath the wing negatively, and left the wind coming off the top of the wing with a charge (or vise versa), maybe you could create a useful effect?
If you created slots in the bottom of the wing that formed a passage way that went through the wing to join up with slots in the top of the wing and then placed the ionic drives inside the wing and within these passage ways, it would reduce drag on the top of the wing. Also, the air flow coming out of these slots should create a series of low pressure areas as well as thrust. You could even consider placing a small step down just behind each slot as it emerges from the wing to help in creating low pressure areas. Since this is to be a slow moving wing its angle of attack would create a higher pressure under the wing that would preload the slots feeding the ionic drives inside the wing. Just a thought, good luck, cheers.
I don't think slots on the bottom of the airfoil is a good idea. Air foils rely on the air stream velocity difference across the top and bottom surfaces to create lift by lowering the pressure above the airfoil as the air has to move faster. Rather I would try having more intakes across the top of the airfoil and exhaust out along the surface of the trailing edge. This principle is used on the B-2 and B-21 to increase the air speed across the top of the air foil. I almost wonder if the ground was on the surface of the airfoil and the wire was basically placed above and in front of the surface mounted ground could you increase lift even at higher angles of attack as the air stream would stick to the airfoil longer. I wonder if this could almost be an electric flap.
It definitely feels like there are options here for really precisely shaping airflow over the wing by tuning the angles and power ratios of the propulsion units.
Aerospace Engineer here. Just spitballing off the top of my head, yes, placing the ion thruster inside the wing is definitely the way to go. Essentially a series of ion drive slats. There's a lot of different options, you could also perforate the top of the wing to create low pressure. Could do the old wing tip thruster trick Sikorsky tried. All sorts of ideas come to mind. I think @PlasmaChannel needs more help in the aero department.
@@jadcb159 Absolutely ! Early in this video I noticed his original stated problem of thrusters added on to other structures was still present at the end of the video. If the thrusters were inside the wing and a structural part of it, it seems a bunch of weight and drag would go away. Simple….never to be confused with easy. 🥸
imagine 50 years or shorter from now to think this could be the future of aviation is actually really exciting. i hope to see more designs and watch how far this progresses. your doing amazing work keep it up and we all might see a change in a massive way.
this is never gonna be the future of propulsion. It is literally impossible for this to generate enough thrust for it. Space exploration, sure, it can come in handy for orbital corrections and trajectory corrections where small amounts of thrust is needed.
Citizen science and engineering is always great to see, especially when it's actually pushing the boundaries what we're used to. Looking forward to seeing the full wing!
I won't pretend to have understood all of this, but it is really cool. Especially the engineer's journey to improve the speed of the thrust from 0.4 to 4 m/s. A 10x improvement. Well done man.
Please make an oblique wing. Another aviation development stuck in the past because of technological restrictions. Plus self propelling ionic thrust oblique wing just sounds crazy lol PSPITOW 😂
Amazing! I remember meeting Jay in an Austin coffee shop in 2017. He was hard at work on content for the Plasma Channel which had a few hundred subscribers at the time if I remember correctly. Jay, it's inspiring to see all the fruit your passion and curiosity have grown. Keep soaring, brother!
Wow, which coffee shop was this? Coffee Bean and Tea leaf by chance? Honored you've stuck with me. This is still only the beginning for Plasma Channel!
With 15 years of aircraft design experience under my belt, I find this fascinating. You need to measure the thrust in still air, and moving air. Question, do these thrusters increase thrust with faster moving air?
@@beyondrecall9446 remember that lift happens over the top of the airfoil. Air, for the most part, moves as a unit. While it will move around objects, it will not allow negative space. The air going over the top of an airfoil has a greater distance to travel than the air going under it. Faster moving air creates a low pressure above the wing and the slower moving air creates a higher pressure below it. The air going over the top is the most crucial factor of this whole thing. It will speed up as much as it has to in order to meet back up at the rear of the airfoil with the slower air moving under it. So, therefore, it should be free to flow over the wing with as little restriction as possible. The problem with the ionizers being on to of the airfoil is that they are determining both the speed of the aircraft and the speed of the air flowing over the wing. The air will not speed up to up to the air under the wing because the air going through the ionizers is already determining the speed. You'd have to use more energy to speed up the air exponentially in order to achieve lift. If the ionizers are on the bottom of the wing, you can move the air much slower, using much less energy, and physics will provide the energy needed to speed up the airflow over the wing for you.
@@beyondrecall9446 Remember that lift happens over the top of the airfoil. Air, for the most part, moves as a unit. While it will move around objects, it will not allow negative space. The air going over the top of an airfoil has a greater distance to travel than the air going under it. Faster moving air creates a low pressure above the wing and the slower moving air creates a higher pressure below it. The air going over the top is the most crucial factor of this whole thing. It will speed up as much as it has to in order to meet back up at the rear of the airfoil with the slower air moving under it. So, therefore, it should be free to flow over the wing with as little restriction as possible. The problem with the ionizers being on to of the airfoil is that they are determining both the speed of the aircraft and the speed of the air flowing over the wing. The air will not speed up to up to the air under the wing because the air going through the ionizers is already determining the speed. You'd have to use more energy to speed up the air exponentially in order to achieve lift. If the ionizers are on the bottom of the wing, you can move the air much slower, using much less energy, and physics will provide the energy needed to speed up the airflow over the wing for you.
This is very cool! I have a few suggestions/questions. 1. I believe you can use significantly more cambered wings for this project. The camber is usually limited by the tendency of flow to separate. More camber loosely translates to more lift and not much more drag. 2. The ionic thrusters energise the flow in a manner similar to how multi-element wings on a Formula 1 car do, increasing its kinetic energy which helps keep flow attached. This greatly improves the lift (while also adding a bit of drag). To do this more effectively, you should also consider orienting the ionic thrusters such that the gap on the trailing edge of the thruster is less than the leading edge. It might help increase speed since you're forcing it through a smaller gap and reduce the pressure on the top of the wing. 3. Is there a way to design the thrusters such that the ion flow is only between the thruster and the wing and not the free side of the thruster? This with point 2 might improve the speed. 4. It would be very cool to see if these thrusters can help mitigate stall tendency in aircraft with traditional engines. 5. I don't know much about ionic thrusters, but I feel that the thrust would be roughly constant even at higher speeds. If so, it might still be a practical solution to the idea of flying without moving parts, ignoring the extremely high voltage needed and the safety issues that come with it especially in anything larger than scale RC aircraft. Note on the final calculation. I believe you have fewer equations than variables. To find the exact thrust created, you also need to find the drag. I'd say, mount it on an encoder and record its acceleration over time. It'll help characterize both static thrust, and thrust-drag over velocity. This isn't to say your estimate is far from accurate, but there is potential to improve that estimate. Commercial aircraft often fly with a thrust to weight of 0.25, with most of this thrust required for takeoff. Creating 50gm of thrust can easily allow us to fly a plane around 200-300gm. With some design optimization, it's not impossible to hit the target. Just replacing the 3D printed wing with a hollow foam wing might end up saving you 40-50gm. I would love to have a conversation to think of ideas to improve this project!
This is the first channel I've subscribed to because I wanted to stay updated on what they were working on. Really the video and the sponsor is write up my alley. Looking forward to seeing more!
Suggestion: instead of "extruding" the NACA airfoil to make a wing, revolve the same profile around a vertical axis (symmetry of revolution) to make a disk. The linear parallel linear electrodes of your wing then become concentric rings on top of the disk. Tilt it 90° (positioned vertically its the edge) and see if the lower pressure arising in front of the disk from the radial airflow induced by the Coanda effect can propel it on your merry-go-round gantry!
im not sure if this would work but if you try staggering the wire a bit maybe it would help it gain a little more energy/power because in some parts it may run through the wire more at the cost of it weighing a couple more grams but the outcome may overpower that
Put the thrusters under the wing where pressure is high (more ions there). It will also increase the lift, allowing for a wing profile with a bit less lift.
The fast moving air must be at the top of the wing, not under the bottom for generating lift. A plane is not only about trust, also about lift . Remember the very old trick of 2 pieces of paper hanging parallel. hen blowing ait vetween them they ar closing together...which tells us that the pressure to the surfaces decreases when the air flows faster.
I think that you would get even more output if you wrap the ionic engine with some sort of material that will give it one air intake and one output. Now the air will get pulled in to the ironic engine from everywhere, and if it's only get pulled from the front of the wing it will be a greater total force. Great episode and awesome invention 👍
The ionic thrust videos you do are amazing. The first one you did was how I initially found your channel and it’s awesome seeing you improve the design each iteration
Definitely take a look at foaming pla. It will add up. Also might be worth experimenting on how wide of a section you could make. Less individual sections would be less weight overall? Not positive but its a thought. Very neat!
@@ericheydemann9556 Oh for sure, but this is slightly different. In order to make this work, you need a lot of power in a very light package. MIT has been trying to crack this too and have flown concept models that have worked. But those were across a large gym and only had enough power to fly that length and basically no flight controls. A few more things need to be created before this would be viable.
Love to see you and Joel collaborating. Competition drives innovation; I wouldn't be surprised if you guys stumbled upon something brand new. Keep it up I love your work!
Ok, so an idea that I have if you want this to be usable in aircraft, you might want to have the thrusters below the wing, or use an air intake system near the fuselage, so that the thrusters can be in the wing and not reduce the aerodynamics by a lot (Think of a system like the early migs) Edit1: You could potentially store the batteries in the wings and use the fuselage to make many layers of small ionic thrusters behind a nosecone and have a bit of space to attach weight to test how it performs.
Great project! I think you have to remove the whole electricity installation from the wings. You can't make a wing function - create lift - without free and undisturbed flow around the wing - laminar flow - except when you want to delay the onset of stall. The thrusters are great but I doubt you are at all developing lift. Try to measure the lift with a clean profile for comparison. Keep it up!
@@dusk2dawn2 Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. Upon rethinking I think you could make very large wings with batteries in them and have loads of wires/breakaway points that connect to a mig nosecone at the front of the aircraft, so that you have an air intake but also thrust along the whole length of the aircraft.
@@dusk2dawn2 common misconception - this arrangement, if set up correctly, will actually increase lift. The principle is the same as blown wings/blown flaps - if the propulsion system directs air over an airfoil, it will increase the apparent airspeed, lowering the stall speed and allowing the aircraft to fly slower. Examples of this are the Ball-Bartoe Jetwing (a jet aircraft with a stall speed of less than 40mph/60kph), and several operational aircraft which have blown flaps to increase low-speed performance - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blown_flap , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball-Bartoe_Jetwing
@@servo9421 neither blown flaps or the jetwing operate like this design, blown flaps shape airflow off the rear edge of the wing, and the jetwing introduced air from the engine along the top of the wing. Surely with this design as airspeed increases the efficiency of the ionic thrusters would decrease, and be compounded by increased drag.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car. Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
Your thrusters are quite literally sucking the air off the top of the airfoil and ejecting it out into the space behind. This means you are inducing early flow separation on your airfoil, and that it basically won't function as a wing anymore wherever you have the engines present. This is why engines go *below* the wing.
Love this concept, yes I believe this may be the beginning of non motion based flight. Also, what about using electro coating to replace external wires and metal. Also, possibly you could incorporate the pcb and circuitry inlayed into the section of wing that would further reduce final weight and create the option of variable thrust for steering and yaw control.
16:15 great but look for other applications now while you’re working on the wings. This could be the start of something great if you find the right application.
Man, I've been following this channel for what feels like a really long time. And I gotta say, man, you've done some really impressive engineering work in all of your videos. Great job, keep it up and I can't wait to see more on the ironic wing.
Here’s a Few Ideas Creating a model for an ionic thrust wing capable of achieving speeds up to 10 m/s involves several key design elements. Here’s a conceptual outline: Design Outline for Ionic Thrust Wing 1. Wing Shape: • Airfoil Design: Use a high-aspect-ratio wing for efficiency. A thin, elongated shape will reduce drag and enhance lift. • Materials: Lightweight materials such as carbon fiber or advanced polymers to minimize weight. 2. Ionic Thrusters: • Configuration: Integrate multiple ionic thrusters along the leading edge or distributed across the wing surface. • Ionization Source: Use a gas like air or nitrogen for ionization, which can be accelerated using a high-voltage system. • Power Supply: A compact, high-capacity battery system to provide the necessary power for the ionic thrusters. 3. Control Systems: • Stability and Control: Implement a feedback system to adjust thrust output for stability. Use sensors to monitor speed and orientation. • Adjustable Thrusters: Incorporate variable thrust levels to allow for fine control of ascent, descent, and directional changes. 4. Aerodynamic Enhancements: • Leading Edge Devices: Include devices to enhance airflow and reduce separation at high speeds. • Surface Coatings: Use hydrophobic or low-friction coatings to reduce drag. 5. Testing and Calibration: • Wind Tunnel Testing: Before full-scale implementation, test the wing in a wind tunnel to refine its aerodynamic properties and ionic thrust performance. • Field Testing: Conduct real-world tests to evaluate performance under various conditions. Conclusion This model leverages the principles of ionic propulsion and aerodynamic design to achieve the desired speed. Prototyping and iterative testing will be essential to optimize the design for performance and stability. This Design in Theory Can Reach Up to 10 M/S 0:10 His final Design 0:28 Competition Design
I fooled with this stuff for a little when ionic wind was used with sticks and foil 😂 I KNEW the potential was there I'm just too uneducated to tune it as amazingly as you! This video has re ignited my curiosity on the subject and I'll be setting up my workspace tomorrow 😁 looking forward to the next video! Hoping you are super successful 👍🏼👍🏼
We also built ionocraft/lifters 20 years ago. One of the guys built huge ones from multiple triangles. It was fun. This propulsion method is just so inefficient that Jay will have to come up with some clever ways to build extremely light and scale it up a lot to be able to fly and carry a power source.
This has hands down got to be one of the most brilliant and interesting concepts/ideas ever! The practical applications for something like this could be incredible, not to mention very cool haha. Absolutely cannot wait to see where it goes next!!!
@Plasma Channel I have an interesting idea. If you don't connect the different plasma segments in series but instead activate them one after another at a specific frequency, like a chain reaction, continuously accelerating the "airwave."
What if you were to integrate the components of the thruster into the surface of the wing? That way you don't have the drag of the components (which would be pretty horrible), and you might be able to create some interesting patterns in the wing surface that might help as well. Regarding weight of the printed parts, you might want to investigate LW-PLA, which is a little less than half of the weight of normal PLA.
I agree with this comment. I know very little about aero dynamics, but I feel like having the thrusters on top of the wing would disrupt the laminar flow over the air foil. You might get better results with this integrated into the wing or inside of the wing. Also I see it being a fractional gain but, vortex generators on the leading edge might help you out with lift as well.
In 1969, after having been introduced and taught fractions, our teachers told us all that what we had just learned would soon be obsolete and we would now have to learn a new way of measurement, the metric system. (This being my first realization that something was grievously wrong with the public education system, ie being taught methodologies that would soon be outdated.) We were promised that by the time we graduated High School, we would be on the metric system. Very quickly, it was obvious that a system of measurement rooted in base 10 made the most sense, being simpler and easier to understand. Imagine the disappointment of an unfulfilled promise...
Try putting the thrusters inline inside the wing instead of over it. Picture a harmonica. It would create a better air flow over the lifting surface. While each thruster would increase the speed of the air flowing into the next one.
I thought of that while watching a @integza video and where he explains that the electrons "push" the air out of the way....then why not encapsulate that, and as you mentioned, the wing itself should be the thruster not a series of thrusters on top of the wing. Seems a lot of the electron force would push air in all directions and not just directly behind it...just a thought though. :) Awesome videos!
Putting it over the wing should lower the pressure above the wing which increases lift. Wings achieve this phenomenon via their natural shape and angle. You can do this with spinning objects look up the Magnus Effect.
@@danielheitz7393 sure, I get wing design and function but if that was the case then why don't we see modern airplanes with wings directly above wings? There has to be some negative to that concept, counteracting forces due to the small wing sections above the true wing...just my 2 cents :) Would be interesting to include some sensor measurements on pressure for these prototypes, possibly even exclude the "thruster" component and just put wings sections above a full wing and see what the measurements come out to. I'm no aerospace engineer :) - just curious and interested.
@@legion9396that’s because modern airplane design doesn’t support that first of all as we have already jet engines for thrust and the massive wing/wingspan combined with jet engine already creates more than enough lift. Secondly the second set of winngs on top would only add into coefficient of drag in comparison to adding more lift i.E not an efficient design. Old airplane design used those to compensate for moderate thrust but as you can see throughout the timeline of airplane development as jet engines emerged, bi-fold wings lost into existence.
So I am a jet mechanic in school to get my Airframe and powerplant certification see your video is awesome. I have a suggestion hear me out cover your top airfoil and port a smooth mouth for the intake and keep it above the chordline of you airfoil or build it underneath the wing let me know what you think when you get around to it.
I am working on an ionic plane also. I think putting the thrusters on the wings might not be the most efficient way of doing this so i am working on a different design. I am looking forward to seeing what you do with your design, very interesting stuff.
Been following your progress sense the mark 1 and mark 2. Very interesting project I’m curious does a vibration effect to the ion thruster create more thrust? I know incorporating this would add to the weight, but I’m curious about how ion thrust could be used. I have a few ideas myself that would reduce weight and might incorporate a larger thrust if the vibration theory works out. Might have to make my own channel so I can add to the fun haha
So as an aviator I have a couple concerns. 1. What would the stall speed look like? 2. You need to lift the wing more than 1 wing length from the surface. In aviation we have a term called ground effect. This is the zone which at wing actually performs much better while it is with 1 wing length of the surface. 2. You should create a wind tunnel and see how the airflows around the wing with the ion drives attached and in an active/non active state. I would love to chat with you about this project and give you insight from an aviation standpoint. Love this idea keep up the great work! I hope it works.
Hey all! Thanks for watching, and to Curiosity Stream for supporting this video. Update: Turns out thrust is much lower than 44 grams. Chat GPT was fairly accurate - but my rusty ability to convert Newtons to grams of force definitely slipped. I'll update this comment when i test it physically.
Check out Joel's ionic thrusters here: www.youtube.com/@integza
My last BSI thruster here: ruclips.net/video/yftKjkZHirc/видео.html
Peter Sripol's channel here: ruclips.net/channel/UC7yF9tV4xWEMZkel7q8La_w
Your design is not even remotely scalable. Every edge or opening is a increase in drag.
You need to make each motor it's own aerofoil in a multi blade wing design to have any chance.
Chat GPT is a language model its not for math. this was a sick video btw
@@jdoe9518People are much more likely to listen to you if you don't have an bad tone, just a life pro tip for you :p
Keep in mind, ur working older technology. current level of ionic propulsion is super conducting ionic propulsion and plasma emission. it is X 10 X 10 the thrust output compared to non superconducting. using cvd based graphene material
Great design! looking forward to seeing you at Supercon
(P.S I might have some badge stuff for you.)
Man! this is beautiful... Let's see if Joel can one up you now! And to answer your last question... probably NO! Sorry, but I don't see this being an efficient way to fly! Issue is to get very high airflow I expect there to be exponentially high electrical waste. Doesn't mean these efforts are useless. not only the science coming out of these experiments could lead to new breakthroughs, but also, this would already make a great space heater that kills 99.9% of the airborne germs too!! 😁
Hey have you ever accidentally shocked your balls? @electroBOOM
no, because he never does anything accidentally @@LeafBoye
@ElectroBOOM i love what's been going on in this series. i dunno if thrust per watt hour is the best way to judge, but i have a feeling in the end, it'll be really cool, but perhaps not competitive. and i am a-ok with that B-) hehehe
If we ever get the perfect battery, then maybe these wasteful, energy intensive sci-fi propulsion methods will be a thing. 🤷♂️ 🔋
@@blaircox1589 The waste of energy to get the benefit of almost no maintenance...
Seeing air suddenly start moving so fast with no noise from a fan or anything is so cool!
I want ionic thruster cpu cooler.
I'm just thinking how you'd incorporate a giant one into a kinda haunted house to make one room feel like there's a storm inside
So cool, literally.
So much HF noise though
@@ryanwolfe2219
Huh.
True.
WEIGHT REDUCTION IDEAS:
My dad and I used to build model airplanes you should like into using
balsa wood and
wax paper for the skin. Also replace those metal bolts with
nylon bolts if you can!
Finally 3d prints are a lot stronger thann your design is giving them credit for! Make your parts thickness .4 or .6 mm! Use 2 or 3 layers of walls. If your part has enough room for support material you can definitely reduce weight.
Good luck!! If you want some help reach out!
Simillar to tom stantoms air powered plane
@@quinnthebin2304 precisely!
And where possible, use LW-PLA.
Another good tip is when trying to optimize supports, he should use hexagons cutouts instead of rectangular ones.
the metal bolts are for current draw aren't they?
Very cool indeed!
You should have an alliance with the tomato, Joel's main enemy
This may be a secret weapon I never realized.
@@PlasmaChannel you still have not used the photoelectric effect to generate electrons/ions
lol
@@PlasmaChannel Also please try to contact with Tom Stanton, he perform experiments with plane which powered by pressured air. He know a lot about how properly to reduce a weight.
@dalebob9364 don't always be so quick to believe your own thoughts, until you're spent significant amounts of time and effort challenging them
The thing that I like the most about these videos is how you highlight the trail and error process. Not simply just showing a completed working project. It emphasizes the importance of building good habits and consistently improving/building upon the prior iterations.
You know, people say that this will not be a workable propulsion system, but what ionic propulsion may allow, is an almost drag-free aircraft. If the ionic system is in the correct location and configuration, such as somewhere around the front of the wings, high-pressure areas could conceivably be eliminated.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car.
Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
Just a thought, but you could use a foaming PLA to further reduce weight. Love the progress so far and can't wait for the next video!
I was going to suggest this. I print all of my planes in lw pla strengthened with carbon rods. I can usually achieve 40% weight reduction over the pla versions taking into account the carbon rods. I'd suggest to look into Tom Stanton's videos on his second channel on how to design a wing around printing in lw pla. I'd also plan around using the body style of a Discus launch glider to reduce the weight and streamline it as much as possible
Tom Stanton made a great video on optimizing a 3d printed wing on his second channel. The video can be found here ruclips.net/video/QJjhMan6T_E/видео.htmlsi=h2qctI5dOLai09HS. The cad process is slightly different but it looks like it works quite well.
Lets lose some weight! How about this, the skin can be wax paper for now. Could the ion assembly be reduced to a hot wire grounding to gold leaf affixed to the skin of the wing? If serrations are ideal, painters tape can be cut to make the serrations, apply the gold leaf to the wax paper, peel away the tape and voila. A series of wires to grounding bands on the wing itself may doubly improve keeping air flow right at the surface of the wing? The next trick is the elevation of the wire from the wing? would one milimeter be enough/too much? So much fun to be had on this project. I subbed to keep up to date you your progress! Oh, and you may have to move to a fog machine as dry ice can only do so much, and watching flow over the wing is so important at this phase.
And/or foaming filament. Also, Tom Stanton developed some nice manufacturing method for very lightweight airfoils.
The problem with this stuff is it's super brittle. There is this Formfutura PP that is better IMO and also about the same weight. And you don't have to fuss with getting the foaming right.
regarding the ionic wing, it occurs to me that maybe we’re thinking too macro.
That is, the electrons accelerating the air molecules is all happening at an extremely microscopic scale. Therefore the system to accelerate them optimally should be designed this way.
That is, building a kind of 3d lattice (like a potato dicer with channels for the air), where each channel is scaled in width and height according to flow and turbulence. In the length dimension (along the axis of flow), the distance between subsequent “accelerators” can be very very small.
So somehow 3d printing a “dicer” (or printing layers then coating them using electroplating) could be a useful approach.
I’ve done a preliminary analysis, and. It seems that an ionic engine with this 3D lattice design could be very powerful. I’ve emailed it to Jay.
Anyway very fun to think about!
Amazing how half of Peter's face is more interesting then both of us combined
P.S:This is war now my friend!!!
Go easy on him. He hasn't studied Mr. Teslas work like you have.
(im on your side btw)
Damn tomato's!
Thanks for letting the world watch.
I love the three of you both :D
The easiest way to drop mass is to buy foaming agent infused PLA.
You can adjust the amount of bubbles by changing nozzle temp (take care that it affects effective volumetric flow coming out of nozzle)
Printing model airplanes is one of the main reason why that filament exists.
Also redesigning your part to be printable in vase mode is also pretty important.
The easiest way to drop weight is stop 3D printing. Either go balsa-film construction or hot wired styrofoam.
agreed
Here's the thing if he's able to successfully use three d printing to build something that flies.
It leaves some engineering wiggle room for other designs.
Easiest way to go lighter is to remove 3d printing from the equation. Even LW-PLA is multiple times heavier than balsa and tissue/plastic or foam. I've built a couple of well designed (not my designs) 3D printed RC planes myself and they're just a curiosity. They're good looking and easy to build but they're very heavy and shatter into a million pieces with impacts that a foam plane would survive with good repairability.
Hi, Jay! Great challenge, great work! 🙂
Three suggestions for this project.
First: You can place the wires lifted over the wing, but the surface of the HED thruster can be just an aluminum sheet glued to the surface of the wing itself. This can reduce drag, reduce weight and (possibly!) improve the laminar flow over the wing, which largely reduces skin drag. Consider electrodeposition of copper instead of aluminum sheets... would be even lighter and far less disruptive of airflow. Also consider placing wires on the trailing edge of an airfoil in order to avoid creating vortices (you are doing that already, in a sense).
Second: You are thinking of a traditional "tube and wing" glider-like design, which is great, but a more modern solution would be a blended wing body (BWB). Since you are dealing with low speed flights, active stabilization should be far simpler than in the transonic speeds we see in military BWB aircraft, if needed at all. That will give you far more lift and thus far greater flight autonomy. Also, the batteries and HV generators would be sitting on a surface of the plane that generates lift, giving you far less need for structural strength in your wings, translating into a bit less weight overal (and every 10 grams count in your case...). Remember: gliders carry no heavy equipment and that is why their extra long wings can be so light - they need little reinforcement for structural integrity.
Third: You are entering the wonderful realm of active flow control, which is an area that has seen a lot of research lately. Consider using a few of those thrusters under the area near the tips of the wings also and making that area a little "fat" at the trailing edge, so that the Coanda effect will give you "up" and "down" control authority on the wings (as you change the ratio of flow between the upper trhuster and the lower thruster) and you will not have to use (in this case, heavy) servos and control surfaces for controlling youraircraft. In your case, the idea is substituting ailerons for the differential in force between two thrusters, one over the wing and descending because of the Coanda effect, and the other under the wing and ascending for the same reason.
Hope it helps. 😉
PS: Dear Integza (Joel), feel invited! 🤣
this is very useful information
This is brilliant, thanks for sharing!
The solar powered Zephyr is the current record holder for long range unmanned flight and it’s airframe structure is an assembly of thin-walled composite tubes made from high-modulus carbon fibre in epoxy resin. Wings and flight control surfaces are skinned with Mylar. Considering you need enough surface area to lift batteries you might be building a pretty large wing here. The materials above might be the answer
In addition to active flow control, this project is starting to enter the regime of the biplane. With some optimizing, the ionic thrust segment could be a factor in generating lift. The aerodynamics between the segments and the wing could effectively cancel out any added gain from a bi-plane setup, however it would allow you to shrink the wingspan of the vehicle by a margin that may help with weight.
Additionally, with the vehicle having (effectively) blown lift surfaces (similar to that of the C-17) you'll immediately see some gains from the intake of air from the surroundings similar to a dyson bladeless fan.
@@GriffithJones That is an idea, indeed. I suggest you place it in the main responses, so that Jay (the owner of the channel) can see it. Now, it is just a reply to my comment. ;)
The beauty of RUclips, you got to learn literally anything you can think of.
Thats funny because when you confront any of the so called "experts" they contemptuously call you "RUclips experts-youtube scientist" they systematically despise RUclips, not realizing that It is the modern library of Alexandria.
the ionic wind generated by the previous electrode is being obstructed by the electrode next to it, the improved version sorts the problem a bit but still the obstruction happens. so instead of using multiple modules right next to each other, you can use two long modules throughout a vast area of the wing. i hope that may improve the weight to thrust ratio.
Alternatively one could follow in the footsteps of an MIT project from 2018 and stack the linear ion thruster modules on top of each other instead of behind each.
exactly, the old design worked because there was very little obstruction, and one module feed the next. in this case each module is too obstructive. but if he replaces the razor blade with a wire maybe this problem will solve itself.
@@danilooliveira6580 Maybe even coiled wire, or stretched out spring? I wonder if the number of serrations/corona points has an effect here
@@plower221 If points matter, then going with carbon fiber would be a good way to go. There's a certain kind of ion air purifier that see big Clive show and tear into and it uses carbon fiber strands to create a lot of ions.
@@plower221 I'd be interested to test the impact of electrode width, ground width and gap between the two.
Seems like could save some weight using wire instead of serrated blade. Just strip small amounts of insulation to create the points instead.
3D printing with foaming/lightweight/aero PLA will save a lot of weight on your printed parts, around 65%. It's PLA with a foaming agent so when it extrudes it expands at a known amount and ends up being less dense. It's used primarily for printing drone components.
this or simply just switching to abs or PP which are significantly lighter than PLA. Although those filaments can be quite difficult to print accurately
Needs a simpler wing all together tbh, I would be looking at things like man powered flight and follow the "straight" wing design (carbon fiber). Wings create lift by making low pressure system behind the leading edge over the trailing edge essentially turning thrust into lift, above the wing... not below! thats where your lift comes from thats why the tear drop shape. He hasnt got the thrust to ever make that shape an effective wing. He needs a cutting wing... a straight wing. ALSO... he will need to move the thrust off the wings, i hope he highlights why next one but i can see the fundamental problem hes making already. Think propeller planes, surface area, and thrust positions. Have a safe and happy new year.
Could aerogel have a place here. It will be poetic
I genuinely love when science and tech channels fight to make the better tech. It's like a mini war like the space race. They keep trying to one up each other making it better and better.
I love how these "war" bring out more innovations than single handed projects, I am following you both. Lets just say Integza takes the cake for being hilarious at some point his editing and style of the content he creates is amazing. To each their charm I love you both keep going, I am on the edge of my seat the whole time!!
I love seeing creators collab. This is the meaning of humanity: Combining our individual ideas and specialties to accomplish our awesome and lofty goals.
this is incredible
imagine what the world would be like if it wasnt controlled by corporations and individuals such as this were alllowed to express their ingenuity
We need wayyyyy more of this throughout the science community(ies) ....for years, I've watched documentaries, miniseries, etc. and then also people in your position, who are building things to see what'll happen and then refining from there, and actually committing to the experiment 150% (like seriously, how many times did you go back to the 3D printer in this video alone?) , and on that note, also utilizing modern tech IN PRACTICE, rather than just spouting hypotheses and equations at us.
I have to say, this is the first time I've sat here, entirely captivated the entire time, to see the outcome....hell even sat here through the sponsorship part, which I almost never do (because ads), and will likely end up on Curiosity soon....and then also subbed after only seeing one video from someone.
Unfortunately until people understand the full impact of a digital age ,there wont be too much of this. Many fail to realize something gamers got off the bat. That the modern age allows you to grow a rivalry that improves both parties . If more people of any background acted like these two regardless if nationality there would be alot more advancement over all.
This is my favorite type of tech video because it constantly evolves and adapts to improve. This is why I think Peter’s videos are also incredible. The teacher is learning along with the student (viewers) and the real teacher is experience. I’m pretty sure Peter knows some of the questions he poses to the camera but through practical application we get to learn scientific principles. Great job! I would love to see this work!
Great work on the propulsion, and it looks like your propulsion units actually help create lift. Using more tradition "model plane" building techniques, i.e balsa or thin foam instead of 3d printed might help save even more weight
Bit worried about the drag you'll end up with though, especially on a full wing. I think drag tends to increase exponentially.
There's a special low weight filament available
@@DJXaevo maybe, but the drag issue remains.
balsa/foam will be way lighter than anything 3d printed
I understand that engineering something like this take time, but considering that you already have plans on improving this design, i realy want to see a new video on this soon. Absolutely amazing and fun video!
super cool design, awesome to see you talk with Peter about the wing design. there's another youtuber I've been watching, Tom Stanton who's been making super light wight wings for an air powered plane. might be worth looking his stuff for ideas on how to create some really light wings
Exactly my thought
Thinkflight would be another great option with his light weight rubber band powered plane
I *suspect* a more efficient design might be to use the the body of the wing as the "duct" of a sort of "ducted plasma fan." If the leading edge of the wing is the high-voltage conductor, you could move air through the wing to produce the thrust, while also gaining the benefit of a wing as a lifting body, even if angle of attack never factors into your generation of lift. I could (obviously) be wrong, but I wanted to mention the idea anyway, in case it can be of use.
I completely agree, I believe the config reaction will not produce lift. The air travelling slower over the top of the wing generates lift. The thrusters are speeding up the air. Has more chance of working if they were under the wing or integrated into it like you suggested.
I don't know much about ion thrusters, but I know that propeller efficiency has a lot to do with each blade getting as much clean air as possible undisturbed by the previous blade as it's rotating.
Im wondering if having the ion thrusters trailing one another affects efficiency in the same way. By the time the air is reaching the fourth thruster I can only imagine it would be incredibly choppy air. Can the thrusters be stacked? I believe a single larger, more powerful thruster would be more efficient and effective to integrate into a wing.
I have experimented a lot with wind turbines although not an expert, I understand that airflow is a highly complex concept that can sometimes be counterintuitive.
Love the videos and concepts you are creating. Keep it up. I've had a concept in my head for something I call a magnetic vortex compression drive. Videos like yours make me realise I should put concept into practise instead of fear of failure.
Jay, look at using an aluminum door screen mesh for the electrode instead of the blades. Huge weight reduction, awesome conductivity and the wind it produces is super impressive. It'll do what you're looking at with the serrated blades, but has way more points when you trim the mesh. Tested it last night and it works great.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car.
Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
Or a scroll saw blade. You could make a jig and flatten it further on a belt sander
You are one of the maybe 5 channels that continuously keep me absolutely stoked about anything related to aerospace. You are part to thanks for my interest in aerospace and hopefully career in such too. After this senior year of high school I plan on going to college for mechanical engineering, with the hopes of working on anything plane related. Maybe even designing my own planes.
What are your other favorite channels?
Could you use a metal foil plastic like a mylar foil 'space blanket' as electrodes & ground planes?
That would REALLY cut down on weight as it could also double as the wing surface 😁
That’s an interesting idea. Wonder if it would work if the trailing electrode was just a conductive strip on the surface the wing itself
I like it , but I'd be afraid voltage breakdown would poke holes that would grow exponentially.
@@petevenuti7355I think so too.
@@petevenuti7355What if one of the trailing electrodes was an aluminum tape or electroplate on the surface of the wing itself?
Small surface defects caused by the tape edges could damage the boundary layer flow, so I'm Really suggesting electroplating.
An electroplated wing surface could reduce the weight and pull the boundary layer more tightly to the surface.
Tried this, but the thin plating disintegrated too fast (to be fair, it was really really thin)
Very excited to see this. Great idea to use the wing as part of the thrust. That was brilliant.
I did notice that you are putting the ion thrusters on top of the wing.
This may led to a few problems if you do plan to fly it.
The aerodynamics of the top part of the curved wing makes the air above the wing move faster. This also thins the air on top which creates in imbalance of air pressure. the thicker air below pushes the wing up, creating lift.
Placing the ion thrusters on top would:
1. Slow the flow of air weakening the lift.
2. The airflow on top of the wing is thinner and less efficient.
Respectfully, I would recommend that you put the ion thrusters on the bottom of the wing.
This would:
1. Take advantage of the thicker air below the wing.
2. Not interfere with the thinner air on top. It might even led to move lift.
I hope that you find this useful and good luck on your build.
Respectfully William.
This is awesome :D. If you want to decrase weight even more, try LA-PLA. It will foam up during printing and it's about 45% the weight of regular PLA. You could also use a wing section of 3dlab print's Piper Cub. Printed in LW-PLA they weight aroung 20g each. If printed with the right settings the whole plane will weight less than 300g (just the material)
The pre foamed Version can be printed on a Prusa the regular uses a higher temp then a prusa is capable if I remember correctly good luck!
I’d try carbon PLA on a larger wing
@@CajunWorksNope, you can use regular LW-PLA on a Prusa. My Prusa Mini has no problem with it.
@@CajunWorks I can confirm what DominatorD1 said. I already printed a couple of planes with regular LW-PLA on a Prusa MK3S+.
Balsa wood is better
One of the coolest aviation projects ever. Love how you’re collaborating with two of my favorite RUclipsrs too. Great stuff, thanks.
it might be a good idea to mount the ionic thruster layers inside the wing and use the air that has been accelerated to replace the boundary flow layer with each stage. That way you could reduce drag by ensuring laminar flow and not having a large structure sticking up out of the wing. That would reduce the amount of thrust you need to generate in order to make something fly.
Alwyn has a good idea
You mean like a CoFlow jet ?
@@vuibulevbaoultch8727 The ion thruster mounted on top of the wing is already a bit like that. I was thinking more like an ionic thruster version of the Northrop X-21 boundary flow control system.
yeah, the way this is structured, and crosswind or turbulence will interfere with the thrust, not just the lift. i could think of it looking a little like a skylon engine acrooss the whole surface of the wing.
@@sorejack Yes, it certainly could be structured that way. You mean the rim of ramjets that go around the outside of the SABER engine but along the wing right? Turbulence between the boundary flow and upper layers is the problem. So accelerating the boundary flow layer would either reduce or invert that.
I was thinking of something integrated into the structure of the wing so that it has the drag and lift characteristics of a normal wing when off. but produces both lift and trust whilst reducing drag when turned on.
In the novel I am writing, there is a "surface air acceleration technology" applied to sailing ships. Your design actually turned my fantasy into reality. Such wind speed may be too low for an aircraft, but it is completely sufficient for a sail. A wind speed of 4 meters per second is approximately 6 knots. That's enough for the sailboat to sail normally. great!
Suggestion.
Right now, it seems the bottleneck will be reducing mass to decrease the stress on the engines. But I feel like we could use this to our advantage. What if you built it as a biplane. More wings, more surface area, but if you use 3d printed plastic, not much in weight increase.
Not even a biplane, think about it like the airfoil on a powered paraglider. Basically two wings made of thin material on top of one another to create lift. If you sandwiched them between two layers of airfoils (the top maybe with some ducts to enable airflow?), you could reduce the size.
@@promess This is basically what I just thought of, too. Like a micro-biplane wing with the ionic thrust generated between the sections of wing. I'm curious as to whether it'd be better to basically split the airfoil just above the nose, and split the tail edge (tiny bit of rake)? as 2 full airfoils would be pretty draggy, but so would the split lip on the front most likely. Not an engineer, don't mind me if I'm dumb.
Canard , not biplane, go canard
He may as well go even further than this, going all the way to a Handley-Page style multi element wing for more lift with lower velocity charles-oneill.com/aem614/ReferenceMaterial/A+M+O+Smith+HIGH+LIFT+AERODYNAMICS.pdf
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car.
Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
It’s criminal you’re under 1mil subs. Your designs are top tier, and your videos are fantastically produced. I genuinely believe you could change the industry with this. Always love when you upload!
I agree, unfortunately it's a side effect of not posting very often. It's the downside to spending so much time and energy on each video. They come out great but makes the channel grow slow.
@dalebob9364 I'd agree that revolutionazing the aeronautic industry is a bit far fetched for sure. But give the guy some credit, even if "just" makes an RC airplane with this design, it'd be nice and actually innovative.
Not like some other *popular science* channels who are just milking their: vacuum chambers, liquid nitrogen, kinetic sand, oobleck, 3D printers and other things that are already well figured out to get views (aka. Steve Mould). This guy has a goal that requires real thought and engineering work. Just like Tom Stanton's air powered plane isn't going to be the next big thing in aerospace, but hell he optimized the shit out of it. Not just anyone with a couple of available tools and a nice camera can do that.
There is a huge difference between channels that demonstrate sciency stuff and these design/engineering journey channels. If nothing else, they manage to demonstrate that every hobbyist with some dedication can make use of today's technologies like 3D printing to create some really cool stuff. Just more power to the people.
There are a number of channels that don't post often that do really well : ie Mark Rober, but it takes time
@@jelybrd mark Rober makes videos that basically exclusively go viral… not exactly a fair comparison lol.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car.
Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
This is the best part of RUclips. It’s amazing how my favorite RUclipsrs always end up working together. Always looking forward to seeing your designs.
I just can't wait for this to happen,I imagine that stars wars as a sci fiction will someday become a reality
Great job! During 12:10 you demonstrated airflow through the thrusters. A place where drag is crucial. I think you should take inspiration from F1 cars(pre 2022) for this. They had elements (or sticky uppy bits as Sam Collin would say in his tech talk breakdowns) that countour the airflow throughout the body. Monza GP setups have the most slippery/least downforce spec cars for reference. Looking forward for the next version of this.
You are making this old mans mind explode with "what if's " . Love it. Makes me want to try making back up things , like a thrust dyno for such small scale projects. 👻
Great work! I think weight can be reduced by attaching one of the two halves of the split ground directly to the wing , maybe as a metal strip embedded in the wing itself. Should also reduce the drag.
Are two grounds necessary, could there not be a benefit from streamlining the flow and remove one of them while directly integrating the remaining one smoothly into the wing.
Arguably the same could be done for the electrodes allowing for laminar flow.
I literally just spent 5 minutes writing a long-winded way of suggesting effectively the same thing 😂
I'm an engineer myself and I find your videos fascinating. The issue with applying this to a full size airplane is obviously going to be the power source. Batteries just weigh too much for it to be useful. A better solution would be to use a small turbine generator to generate the electrical power required. It would still use fuel, but it would be no where near what the requirement is for current turbofan jet engines. An added benefit to this is as the fuel is consumed, the weight of the plane becomes lighter. Additionally, a small battery pack could be used to provide emergency power in case the main turbine fails. Currently, airliners have something known as an APU or Auxiliary Power Unit that is used to provide electrical and hydraulic power to the plane's systems if the engines fail. This is what happened in Jan 2010 when a plane landed in the Hudson River in New York. Captain Sully switched on the APU to keep the plane's systems working which significantly contributed to the positive outcome of the incident.
So a plane that uses this setup could be equipped with just an oversized APU to provide main power with a battery pack in case of emergencies if the APU fails. The battery pack could be sized to provide 10-20 minutes of flight time. Even longer if reduced thrust is used. Overall, this would reduce the amount of pollution in the aviation industry. One of the issues with this system is that water conducts electricity. So rain/snow/ice could be an issue with the conductive components and cause short circuits reducing the available thrust and possibly damaging the power converter.
this was absoulutely beautiful! I loved watching the process and can not wait to see this unfold. Seeing the way you work through the set backs and used them as fuel to improve was so satisfying.
I would recommend trying to measure the static pressure on top of the airfoil either mechanically or in a computer wind tunnel simulation. The pressure on top of the airfoil needs to be lower than the bottom of the airfoil, which may not be the case having the thrusters along the top of the whole wing. If you have a high pressure on to the wing will create downwards force and you’d have to rely solely on the angle of attack to create a higher pressure under the wing, instead of the foil.
Also something that I thought of, is to make sure the average vector of the thrust air flow is parallel with the chord of the wing, as to not induce any separations of the air flow away from the curve of the air foil. Although with a setup like this, there’s a unique opportunity to play around with adjusting the vector of each stage of the thruster to be angled to force air perpendicular to the tangent of the curve (the Normal Line) of the airfoil at each stage. Forcing airflow over the wing in a setup like this could theoretically make an almost unstallable wing, as the airflow can never fully separate as long as there’s power.
Also on a separate note, I had the idea of smashing copper wire with a hammer to flatten it out, and creating a razor like edge with the weight savings and improved conductivity of copper wire.
If you put metallic tape on the bottom of the wing and charged the air beneath the wing negatively, and left the wind coming off the top of the wing with a charge (or vise versa), maybe you could create a useful effect?
If you created slots in the bottom of the wing that formed a passage way that went through the wing to join up with slots in the top of the wing and then placed the ionic drives inside the wing and within these passage ways, it would reduce drag on the top of the wing.
Also, the air flow coming out of these slots should create a series of low pressure areas as well as thrust.
You could even consider placing a small step down just behind each slot as it emerges from the wing to help in creating low pressure areas.
Since this is to be a slow moving wing its angle of attack would create a higher pressure under the wing that would preload the slots feeding the ionic drives inside the wing.
Just a thought, good luck, cheers.
Food for thought there for sure .
I don't think slots on the bottom of the airfoil is a good idea. Air foils rely on the air stream velocity difference across the top and bottom surfaces to create lift by lowering the pressure above the airfoil as the air has to move faster. Rather I would try having more intakes across the top of the airfoil and exhaust out along the surface of the trailing edge. This principle is used on the B-2 and B-21 to increase the air speed across the top of the air foil.
I almost wonder if the ground was on the surface of the airfoil and the wire was basically placed above and in front of the surface mounted ground could you increase lift even at higher angles of attack as the air stream would stick to the airfoil longer. I wonder if this could almost be an electric flap.
It definitely feels like there are options here for really precisely shaping airflow over the wing by tuning the angles and power ratios of the propulsion units.
Aerospace Engineer here. Just spitballing off the top of my head, yes, placing the ion thruster inside the wing is definitely the way to go. Essentially a series of ion drive slats. There's a lot of different options, you could also perforate the top of the wing to create low pressure. Could do the old wing tip thruster trick Sikorsky tried. All sorts of ideas come to mind. I think @PlasmaChannel needs more help in the aero department.
@@jadcb159
Absolutely ! Early in this video I noticed his original stated problem of thrusters added on to other structures was still present at the end of the video. If the thrusters were inside the wing and a structural part of it, it seems a bunch of weight and drag would go away.
Simple….never to be confused with easy. 🥸
I'm a simple old Canadian carpenter, but this was really cool.Enjoy watching your innovation
imagine 50 years or shorter from now to think this could be the future of aviation is actually really exciting. i hope to see more designs and watch how far this progresses. your doing amazing work keep it up and we all might see a change in a massive way.
It's people like you that eat lead paint, this doesn't work do you know why they don't use it, waste of energy and little to no thrust.
It can't be, there is no way you can reach high enough efficiency.
Think about fog and rainfall. That cause unevitable shorts.
50 years from now.... More like never.
this is never gonna be the future of propulsion. It is literally impossible for this to generate enough thrust for it. Space exploration, sure, it can come in handy for orbital corrections and trajectory corrections where small amounts of thrust is needed.
Citizen science and engineering is always great to see, especially when it's actually pushing the boundaries what we're used to. Looking forward to seeing the full wing!
I won't pretend to have understood all of this, but it is really cool. Especially the engineer's journey to improve the speed of the thrust from 0.4 to 4 m/s. A 10x improvement. Well done man.
Please make an oblique wing. Another aviation development stuck in the past because of technological restrictions. Plus self propelling ionic thrust oblique wing just sounds crazy lol PSPITOW 😂
Amazing! I remember meeting Jay in an Austin coffee shop in 2017. He was hard at work on content for the Plasma Channel which had a few hundred subscribers at the time if I remember correctly. Jay, it's inspiring to see all the fruit your passion and curiosity have grown. Keep soaring, brother!
Wow, which coffee shop was this? Coffee Bean and Tea leaf by chance? Honored you've stuck with me. This is still only the beginning for Plasma Channel!
Yes! That's the place ☕⚡
Hello Jay the electrical engineer. 😊😊 Love your innovations regarding aerospace. Love from India.
With 15 years of aircraft design experience under my belt, I find this fascinating.
You need to measure the thrust in still air, and moving air. Question, do these thrusters increase thrust with faster moving air?
They should be underneath the airfoil.
@@mikalhernandez I also thought about repositioning them, but, I guess that would kill lift totally.. But, maybe, just one under the leading edge?
@@beyondrecall9446 remember that lift happens over the top of the airfoil. Air, for the most part, moves as a unit. While it will move around objects, it will not allow negative space. The air going over the top of an airfoil has a greater distance to travel than the air going under it. Faster moving air creates a low pressure above the wing and the slower moving air creates a higher pressure below it. The air going over the top is the most crucial factor of this whole thing. It will speed up as much as it has to in order to meet back up at the rear of the airfoil with the slower air moving under it. So, therefore, it should be free to flow over the wing with as little restriction as possible. The problem with the ionizers being on to of the airfoil is that they are determining both the speed of the aircraft and the speed of the air flowing over the wing. The air will not speed up to up to the air under the wing because the air going through the ionizers is already determining the speed. You'd have to use more energy to speed up the air exponentially in order to achieve lift. If the ionizers are on the bottom of the wing, you can move the air much slower, using much less energy, and physics will provide the energy needed to speed up the airflow over the wing for you.
@@beyondrecall9446 Remember that lift happens over the top of the airfoil. Air, for the most part, moves as a unit. While it will move around objects, it will not allow negative space. The air going over the top of an airfoil has a greater distance to travel than the air going under it. Faster moving air creates a low pressure above the wing and the slower moving air creates a higher pressure below it. The air going over the top is the most crucial factor of this whole thing. It will speed up as much as it has to in order to meet back up at the rear of the airfoil with the slower air moving under it. So, therefore, it should be free to flow over the wing with as little restriction as possible. The problem with the ionizers being on to of the airfoil is that they are determining both the speed of the aircraft and the speed of the air flowing over the wing. The air will not speed up to up to the air under the wing because the air going through the ionizers is already determining the speed. You'd have to use more energy to speed up the air exponentially in order to achieve lift. If the ionizers are on the bottom of the wing, you can move the air much slower, using much less energy, and physics will provide the energy needed to speed up the airflow over the wing for you.
This is very cool! I have a few suggestions/questions.
1. I believe you can use significantly more cambered wings for this project. The camber is usually limited by the tendency of flow to separate. More camber loosely translates to more lift and not much more drag.
2. The ionic thrusters energise the flow in a manner similar to how multi-element wings on a Formula 1 car do, increasing its kinetic energy which helps keep flow attached. This greatly improves the lift (while also adding a bit of drag). To do this more effectively, you should also consider orienting the ionic thrusters such that the gap on the trailing edge of the thruster is less than the leading edge. It might help increase speed since you're forcing it through a smaller gap and reduce the pressure on the top of the wing.
3. Is there a way to design the thrusters such that the ion flow is only between the thruster and the wing and not the free side of the thruster? This with point 2 might improve the speed.
4. It would be very cool to see if these thrusters can help mitigate stall tendency in aircraft with traditional engines.
5. I don't know much about ionic thrusters, but I feel that the thrust would be roughly constant even at higher speeds. If so, it might still be a practical solution to the idea of flying without moving parts, ignoring the extremely high voltage needed and the safety issues that come with it especially in anything larger than scale RC aircraft.
Note on the final calculation. I believe you have fewer equations than variables. To find the exact thrust created, you also need to find the drag. I'd say, mount it on an encoder and record its acceleration over time. It'll help characterize both static thrust, and thrust-drag over velocity. This isn't to say your estimate is far from accurate, but there is potential to improve that estimate.
Commercial aircraft often fly with a thrust to weight of 0.25, with most of this thrust required for takeoff. Creating 50gm of thrust can easily allow us to fly a plane around 200-300gm. With some design optimization, it's not impossible to hit the target. Just replacing the 3D printed wing with a hollow foam wing might end up saving you 40-50gm.
I would love to have a conversation to think of ideas to improve this project!
This is the first channel I've subscribed to because I wanted to stay updated on what they were working on. Really the video and the sponsor is write up my alley. Looking forward to seeing more!
Suggestion: instead of "extruding" the NACA airfoil to make a wing, revolve the same profile around a vertical axis (symmetry of revolution) to make a disk. The linear parallel linear electrodes of your wing then become concentric rings on top of the disk. Tilt it 90° (positioned vertically its the edge) and see if the lower pressure arising in front of the disk from the radial airflow induced by the Coanda effect can propel it on your merry-go-round gantry!
Awesome work! The science, the creativity, the cinematography, all of it is very top notch! Looking forward to the next episode!
@RepentandbelieveinJesusChrist5 aight. Chatbotsayswut?
im not sure if this would work but if you try staggering the wire a bit maybe it would help it gain a little more energy/power because in some parts it may run through the wire more at the cost of it weighing a couple more grams but the outcome may overpower that
Beautiful project, congratulations for the perseverance and tenacity shown. I hope you will continue again and again in the project.
Put the thrusters under the wing where pressure is high (more ions there). It will also increase the lift, allowing for a wing profile with a bit less lift.
The fast moving air must be at the top of the wing, not under the bottom for generating lift.
A plane is not only about trust, also about lift .
Remember the very old trick of 2 pieces of paper hanging parallel. hen blowing ait vetween them they ar closing together...which tells us that the pressure to the surfaces decreases when the air flows faster.
I think that you would get even more output if you wrap the ionic engine with some sort of material that will give it one air intake and one output. Now the air will get pulled in to the ironic engine from everywhere, and if it's only get pulled from the front of the wing it will be a greater total force.
Great episode and awesome invention 👍
Everyone is a genius at least once a year. A real genius has his original ideas closer together.
super cool to see Peter in this, ever since i saw your first thruster i thought of him. cause as you said, he can make anything fly
can't wait to see it flying also feel like the ionic thrust could work realy well for blimp
I really love your use of dry ice & water to show the airflow! Super visual, very fluffy clouds, definitely gives me jollies 😊
I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.
The ionic thrust videos you do are amazing. The first one you did was how I initially found your channel and it’s awesome seeing you improve the design each iteration
Definitely take a look at foaming pla. It will add up. Also might be worth experimenting on how wide of a section you could make. Less individual sections would be less weight overall? Not positive but its a thought. Very neat!
Dude, that is wicked! You are really on to something with this. Also love the competiveness between you two!
Cool prototype but would never be able to be used.
@@johnhilton145 No, not with current tech. But the concept is very interesting!
Wasn't that was said to the Wright Brothers?
@@ericheydemann9556 Oh for sure, but this is slightly different. In order to make this work, you need a lot of power in a very light package. MIT has been trying to crack this too and have flown concept models that have worked. But those were across a large gym and only had enough power to fly that length and basically no flight controls. A few more things need to be created before this would be viable.
This is absolutely amazing!!
I hope to see actual aircraft in the sky using something similar, man that would be so cool.
Good to see your ionic thrust projects taking a step closer to the clouds. It will be awesome to see it in the air.
Love to see you and Joel collaborating. Competition drives innovation; I wouldn't be surprised if you guys stumbled upon something brand new. Keep it up I love your work!
Ok, so an idea that I have if you want this to be usable in aircraft, you might want to have the thrusters below the wing, or use an air intake system near the fuselage, so that the thrusters can be in the wing and not reduce the aerodynamics by a lot (Think of a system like the early migs)
Edit1: You could potentially store the batteries in the wings and use the fuselage to make many layers of small ionic thrusters behind a nosecone and have a bit of space to attach weight to test how it performs.
Great project!
I think you have to remove the whole electricity installation from the wings. You can't make a wing function - create lift - without free and undisturbed flow around the wing - laminar flow - except when you want to delay the onset of stall. The thrusters are great but I doubt you are at all developing lift. Try to measure the lift with a clean profile for comparison.
Keep it up!
@@dusk2dawn2 Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it. Upon rethinking I think you could make very large wings with batteries in them and have loads of wires/breakaway points that connect to a mig nosecone at the front of the aircraft, so that you have an air intake but also thrust along the whole length of the aircraft.
@@dusk2dawn2 common misconception - this arrangement, if set up correctly, will actually increase lift. The principle is the same as blown wings/blown flaps - if the propulsion system directs air over an airfoil, it will increase the apparent airspeed, lowering the stall speed and allowing the aircraft to fly slower. Examples of this are the Ball-Bartoe Jetwing (a jet aircraft with a stall speed of less than 40mph/60kph), and several operational aircraft which have blown flaps to increase low-speed performance - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blown_flap , en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ball-Bartoe_Jetwing
@@servo9421 neither blown flaps or the jetwing operate like this design, blown flaps shape airflow off the rear edge of the wing, and the jetwing introduced air from the engine along the top of the wing. Surely with this design as airspeed increases the efficiency of the ionic thrusters would decrease, and be compounded by increased drag.
I do believe that that's the first perpetual motion machine right there. Hook it up to a pulley and you can then power up your car.
Aim the car down a steep hill, so you can then get to work for free every day. Just take an uber home, and get your dad to tow your car back up hill (you might have to loan him a truck and a chain), so you can then ride your perpetual motion car back to work for free every day. Hook up your cell phone charger to the alternator in series with a flux capacitor and a rectifing diode pack to charge your phone, so you can call your dad for a tow, every day.
Your thrusters are quite literally sucking the air off the top of the airfoil and ejecting it out into the space behind.
This means you are inducing early flow separation on your airfoil, and that it basically won't function as a wing anymore wherever you have the engines present.
This is why engines go *below* the wing.
Love this concept, yes I believe this may be the beginning of non motion based flight.
Also, what about using electro coating to replace external wires and metal. Also, possibly you could incorporate the pcb and circuitry inlayed into the section of wing that would further reduce final weight and create the option of variable thrust for steering and yaw control.
16:15 great but look for other applications now while you’re working on the wings. This could be the start of something great if you find the right application.
Man, I've been following this channel for what feels like a really long time. And I gotta say, man, you've done some really impressive engineering work in all of your videos. Great job, keep it up and I can't wait to see more on the ironic wing.
Here’s a Few Ideas Creating a model for an ionic thrust wing capable of achieving speeds up to 10 m/s involves several key design elements. Here’s a conceptual outline:
Design Outline for Ionic Thrust Wing
1. Wing Shape:
• Airfoil Design: Use a high-aspect-ratio wing for efficiency. A thin, elongated shape will reduce drag and enhance lift.
• Materials: Lightweight materials such as carbon fiber or advanced polymers to minimize weight.
2. Ionic Thrusters:
• Configuration: Integrate multiple ionic thrusters along the leading edge or distributed across the wing surface.
• Ionization Source: Use a gas like air or nitrogen for ionization, which can be accelerated using a high-voltage system.
• Power Supply: A compact, high-capacity battery system to provide the necessary power for the ionic thrusters.
3. Control Systems:
• Stability and Control: Implement a feedback system to adjust thrust output for stability. Use sensors to monitor speed and orientation.
• Adjustable Thrusters: Incorporate variable thrust levels to allow for fine control of ascent, descent, and directional changes.
4. Aerodynamic Enhancements:
• Leading Edge Devices: Include devices to enhance airflow and reduce separation at high speeds.
• Surface Coatings: Use hydrophobic or low-friction coatings to reduce drag.
5. Testing and Calibration:
• Wind Tunnel Testing: Before full-scale implementation, test the wing in a wind tunnel to refine its aerodynamic properties and ionic thrust performance.
• Field Testing: Conduct real-world tests to evaluate performance under various conditions.
Conclusion
This model leverages the principles of ionic propulsion and aerodynamic design to achieve the desired speed. Prototyping and iterative testing will be essential to optimize the design for performance and stability. This Design in Theory Can Reach Up to 10 M/S 0:10 His final Design 0:28 Competition Design
I fooled with this stuff for a little when ionic wind was used with sticks and foil 😂 I KNEW the potential was there I'm just too uneducated to tune it as amazingly as you! This video has re ignited my curiosity on the subject and I'll be setting up my workspace tomorrow 😁 looking forward to the next video! Hoping you are super successful 👍🏼👍🏼
We also built ionocraft/lifters 20 years ago. One of the guys built huge ones from multiple triangles. It was fun. This propulsion method is just so inefficient that Jay will have to come up with some clever ways to build extremely light and scale it up a lot to be able to fly and carry a power source.
I am super excited about this plane you will be building soon, loving your team too
THis is the good part of youtube. Sharing ideas with experts that results in diffusion of knowledge with everyone and flowering of new ideas
These wings combined with the guy who made a solar-powered air glider would go crazy
This is amazing. Thank you!
This has hands down got to be one of the most brilliant and interesting concepts/ideas ever! The practical applications for something like this could be incredible, not to mention very cool haha. Absolutely cannot wait to see where it goes next!!!
@Plasma Channel
I have an interesting idea. If you don't connect the different plasma segments in series but instead activate them one after another at a specific frequency, like a chain reaction, continuously accelerating the "airwave."
A Caterpillar Drive.
i think you just invented a rail gun that shoots air
This is mad dope. Competition in engineering is just so beautiful
you'll have to cut the weight way down for this to fly. excited to see it
What if you were to integrate the components of the thruster into the surface of the wing? That way you don't have the drag of the components (which would be pretty horrible), and you might be able to create some interesting patterns in the wing surface that might help as well. Regarding weight of the printed parts, you might want to investigate LW-PLA, which is a little less than half of the weight of normal PLA.
Agreed, foam wings end up being even lighter than LWPLA
I agree with this comment. I know very little about aero dynamics, but I feel like having the thrusters on top of the wing would disrupt the laminar flow over the air foil. You might get better results with this integrated into the wing or inside of the wing. Also I see it being a fractional gain but, vortex generators on the leading edge might help you out with lift as well.
An american measuring in milimeters is the most logical thing I've seen
good god these fucking eu people always whining about american measurments, in aerospace all americans use metrics.
(and when measuring caliber..)
Pretty much all science is done in metric.
In 1969, after having been introduced and taught fractions, our teachers told us all that what we had just learned would soon be obsolete and we would now have to learn a new way of measurement, the metric system. (This being my first realization that something was grievously wrong with the public education system, ie being taught methodologies that would soon be outdated.) We were promised that by the time we graduated High School, we would be on the metric system.
Very quickly, it was obvious that a system of measurement rooted in base 10 made the most sense, being simpler and easier to understand.
Imagine the disappointment of an unfulfilled promise...
Freedom units have no place in the sciences.
It is good that people in the US are using the metric system, now you need to start using the universal power plug.
Im so glad opensauce is bringing so many creators together
I’m invested in seeing how far you’ll take this project. Really hope you’ll make it fly.
Try putting the thrusters inline inside the wing instead of over it. Picture a harmonica. It would create a better air flow over the lifting surface. While each thruster would increase the speed of the air flowing into the next one.
I thought of that while watching a @integza video and where he explains that the electrons "push" the air out of the way....then why not encapsulate that, and as you mentioned, the wing itself should be the thruster not a series of thrusters on top of the wing. Seems a lot of the electron force would push air in all directions and not just directly behind it...just a thought though. :) Awesome videos!
Putting it over the wing should lower the pressure above the wing which increases lift. Wings achieve this phenomenon via their natural shape and angle. You can do this with spinning objects look up the Magnus Effect.
@@danielheitz7393 sure, I get wing design and function but if that was the case then why don't we see modern airplanes with wings directly above wings? There has to be some negative to that concept, counteracting forces due to the small wing sections above the true wing...just my 2 cents :) Would be interesting to include some sensor measurements on pressure for these prototypes, possibly even exclude the "thruster" component and just put wings sections above a full wing and see what the measurements come out to.
I'm no aerospace engineer :) - just curious and interested.
@@legion9396that’s because modern airplane design doesn’t support that first of all as we have already jet engines for thrust and the massive wing/wingspan combined with jet engine already creates more than enough lift. Secondly the second set of winngs on top would only add into coefficient of drag in comparison to adding more lift i.E not an efficient design. Old airplane design used those to compensate for moderate thrust but as you can see throughout the timeline of airplane development as jet engines emerged, bi-fold wings lost into existence.
So I am a jet mechanic in school to get my Airframe and powerplant certification see your video is awesome. I have a suggestion hear me out cover your top airfoil and port a smooth mouth for the intake and keep it above the chordline of you airfoil or build it underneath the wing let me know what you think when you get around to it.
So make it ducted?
@@quakxy_dukx yes otherwise the thrust efficiency will be countered by the drag on the components across the wing surface
@@pkwithlemur18is that like F1 cars?
im not sure by what you mean
@@dominic.m.i.
As a lover of aviation, I'm amazed at what you've come up with so far.
I feel you're close to complete success and all very amazing!
That's ridiculously cool! Great job!
I am working on an ionic plane also. I think putting the thrusters on the wings might not be the most efficient way of doing this so i am working on a different design. I am looking forward to seeing what you do with your design, very interesting stuff.
14:45 But it stays balanced, doesn't it? So, the wing isn't producing any lift, is it?
wow ionic thrusters have really gone along well. love your work keep us up on updates I wanna see this fly commercial one day.
I could see Dyson using this tech
Dyson is a gimmick
Or a sharper image air purifying tower
20,000v could be lethal
!! I literally though that right when the ionic thruster with the razor blade came out 😂 oh new Dyson
Been following your progress sense the mark 1 and mark 2. Very interesting project I’m curious does a vibration effect to the ion thruster create more thrust? I know incorporating this would add to the weight, but I’m curious about how ion thrust could be used. I have a few ideas myself that would reduce weight and might incorporate a larger thrust if the vibration theory works out. Might have to make my own channel so I can add to the fun haha
when is the fusion update?
first
edit: gramar and layout
So as an aviator I have a couple concerns.
1. What would the stall speed look like?
2. You need to lift the wing more than 1 wing length from the surface. In aviation we have a term called ground effect. This is the zone which at wing actually performs much better while it is with 1 wing length of the surface.
2. You should create a wind tunnel and see how the airflows around the wing with the ion drives attached and in an active/non active state.
I would love to chat with you about this project and give you insight from an aviation standpoint.
Love this idea keep up the great work! I hope it works.