You really need to build out a full "oval" track so you can really let this thing off the chain. I think you could make the track more economical by using PVC "trim board", which is inherently flexible, and comes in sizes that are very similar to what you cut your plywood down to. the PVC trim board also bends into gentle curves without complaint. It's often used as a "roadbed" for garden railroads.
Great ideas! Although, with the current design, that oval would have to be *huge* to have gradual enough curves to not cause binding with the center guide of the current train. They built a really cool concept design, but it can't really turn! 😄
4:16 A few years later hunting oscillation was pretty much solved by British Rail Engineering Limited, who developed the yaw damper (looks like a piston between the train and the bogie). This dampens the oscillations enough that they're not an issue, which enabled the development of high speed trains in Japan, France, Germany and (unsuccessfully) the UK.
To say the U.K. was unsuccessful at high speed trains - we have had 50 years of the Intercity 125. The Advanced Passenger Train, the infamous tilting train, was flawed due to being insufficiently developed. The East Coast has run at 225 kph - 140 mph. The limiting factor with all these trains is our Victorian Railway lines. We could have developed these further, but no, politicians favoured HS2, a hugely expensive railway designed to a world class. In England. With conservation areas, expensive property, high labour costs. The cost was simply too high to achieve the political goals. Put simply, British Railways have suffered most from Political meddling. Otherwise we should be proud of the systems we have that work everyday, even if they don’t run at 180mph.
@@theneonbop understandably so, they're worried if the trains go too fast, we might stop complaining about them and complain about the government instead. They can't have that
Come on, you want a failure of high-speed rail? Just look to the US where our "high speed" is no better than the 125MPH accomplished by steam in the 50s.
Yeah I imagine a matching pair of your engines one on each rail tethered across to each other. Or, just one hugging the profile of the rail, but then there's half as much surface area...so the "contact" pressure patch area would need to be longer.
Do you know what would have made this really cool? Making the Jet Train run on a single rail of an old railway track. You could have opened her up and possibly made an airspeed record for a model Jet Train, a little more engineering involved, but maybe something to think about?? cool video, thanks mate.
Was thinking the same thing! Miles of old track available and it’s gonna be quite straight and level. The shape of the track is a known variable so marking something that hovers straddling one rail shouldn’t be too bad! I HOPE THEY DO THIS NEXT
I certainly don't mean to neg, but I find it interesting that you spent the entire first part of the video addressing the genius of the tapered train wheels that allow them to go around corners, then use the inherent speed limit as a motivator to find a less limited design.. and go to a design that is right back to square one when it comes to being able to go around corners ^_^ You know the lift fans will lift it, you KNOW the jet engine has plenty of thrust to push it.. I guess I'm just not certain what you accomplish with this, outside of a great bit of fun. Which is a perfectly justifiable reason! I love your content, I'm always super excited to see what you've conjured up. I just have this desire to see you do.. more. Please don't take this as anything more (or less?) than constructive criticism
I wonder if you could add a set of wheels on either side of the rail so when turning at high speeds and the inertia overcomes the air cushion it will have something to roll on. Yes it will cause resistance and drag but I'm sure you could spool up the wheels to match the rail speed so there would be minimal speed loss/part wear.
I think the pictures of the original shows a triangular track with a ~30 degree angle. This would bring back the conical shape where the "inside" gets more compression than the outside.
The 'cone shaped' railway wheels and the shape of beer barrels have a common origin story. Barrels used to be moved in breweries, manufacturing plants and deliveries on parallel tracks (sound familiar?) and the shape of the barrel ensured they stayed on those tracks at all times. I believe the shape of the railroad wheel was derived from the knowledge gained from moving beer!
Since you've already established that the train can hover over any surface, I don't think you need to build a longer complete "track" per-se, but rather just find a mostly flat bit of roadway and place your central rail on that surface. Securing that rail to the ground without impeding your train will be a bit of a challenge, of course, but something I think you could figure out! ;)
You should just use an abandoned rail track as a base for your tracks and make them either clamp-on, or magnetically snap-on the rail track. Way more stable and flat than a tripod every x meters. Also, please do a high-cut filter on the audio with the jet-engine. It is painfully loud in the high frequencies. Currently have 8 random dogs barking outside my front door. :P
4:58 There's 2 details that can make a big difference for a practical momentum curtain craft. The outer jet being angled in at approx 45 degrees makes a more effective curtain. The inner jet is for stability and massively increases the stable hover height you can get. The "hover pad" maybe isn't the best application for momentum curtain as you don't have enough area inside the curtain to begin with. An "open plenum" works well as a flat plate with a perimeter lip. A small feed of air to the middle will get you a low but very stable hover without the added complexity of the jet nozzles. For a smooth test track I'd wager it's better.
Guys, using a U or W shape for a rail instead of a T would probably increase your lifting efficiency, as air blown down would curve around back up the U or W and push the craft twice instead of losing the pressure from the sides.
That square plastic duct shown in the video, cut in half and glued back to back. Perhaps at an angle, so you'd get a tall spine with shorter lips on the outer edges.
Brilliant upload, good fun! The real trick will be getting the train to ride on a curved track. Either the train will have to be short in length, riding on a large turning radius track, or the train will have to be segmented into “cars” to be able to flex on a curved track. Amazing possibilities! Keep doing what you do 👍‼️
Another great project! It would be interesting to see if you could angle the four turbo fans such that you could use one rail of an existing rail track instead of having to build a custom track. If you can get a Harrier to hover by ducting the jet exhaust 90 degrees, perhaps you could use a similar approach to directing the bulk of the ducted fans to the top of the rail with secondary thrust applied to the sides of the rail for stabilization. You would just have to ensure that with the train sitting on the track, the bottom clears all the spikes that hold the track in place.
Hi! If you’re planning to improve the hover train, have you considered extending the momentum curtains across the full length of the train instead of just four squares? Here’s an idea: You could use two high-pressure fans, one for the right side and one for the left. Each fan could be split into two lines running from the back to the front, creating four lines of pressurized air. To distribute the air evenly, you could place the fans at the back of the train and use a rectangular beam with a dividing wall in the middle. Small holes along the wall could spread the air across the entire length. Additionally, you could adjust the spacing between the lines to optimize the pressure boost at the center. It might also be worth experimenting with the design of the exhaust system to further enhance performance.
@@Feninx Not close because the shape of the object as it moves through air/fluid is also considered in drag i.e shape of the trains wheels but not the shape of the object as it moves against a solid which is only considered in friction which is what he could have used
RTV31 still exists and is on display in Peterborough. You can just rock and see it on a bit of track. Amazing that nobody seems to know anything about it and it’s just sitting there.
I'd really like to see this go down a longer track at high speed. Also, it wouldn't be a ProjectAir project if the vehicle didn't crash or explode at some point.
here in the states we have this stuff called roofing flashing... its an "L" shaped piece of aluminum available in 10' lengths. it would be pretty economical to build a longer track with it. two pieces back-to-back per track section and they even have a lip that you can overlap the pieces with. it wouldnt be pretty but it would work a treat. sorted.
As others have pointed out, the weak point with this iteration of your model (and I suspect the original design) is turning radius. You could get a tighter turning radius if the lifting pads were individually shorter front to back and the train "car" was articulated (side to side) between the lift points.
Well regardless, turning radius at 250mph is limited by inertia, especially for trains carrying humans. I've ridden the bullet train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou, there are no sharp turns, and it rides super smooth and stable.
Making it compatible with existing tracks would be much more exciting. It should be possible since tracks have a bulbous shape. Wrap the air cushion around each rail so the pressure remains downward, not shear.
You could even keep the existing method of centering and turning, but flipped upside down. As the rails turn, they will come closer to the air cushion on one side, thereby pushing the train in the intended direction
I'd love to see a MagLev train. I've been fascinated by them since seeing Prof. Eric Laithwaite's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. He wrote a book called 'Propulsion Without Wheels' that details the design process. I got the book but didn't build the train!
Hello from France, great video. The French Aérotrain was developed in the 60s until the early 80s by the French engineer Jean Bertin. He built several prototypes. It reached 515km/h (318 miles/h) in 1981. Finally the project was abandoned and replaced by the French TGV high speed train. TGV means "Train à Grande Vitesse" which means "High Speed Train".
The main disadvantage of this type of train is that every individual car needs its own lifting fans. Can get away with forward propulsion only at the front. But the efficiency gains of multi-car trains is vastly diminished when each car has an engine requiring maintenance and they have to be synchronized to ride at the same height. The couplings have to contend with the vertical axis more than a ground bound train would.
YES YES YES please try to build a maglev. But i heard its quite challenge. What i though of would be a mixture of this hovercraft and the maglev. Like to use the magnets to propel the train, but not to make it levitate. Maybe this could help reduce the needed power, by guiding some of the air that is around it anyways under it, so it sits on a nice air cushion :D
Great engineering advancements and learning. Thaks for sharing, I was wondering about centering when I first saw your design interesting to see it come up as I was thinking it was going to be a problem, and it turned out it was, nice to see you overcome it. Though, don't forget about weight, trains took off cause of just can't beat the amount of weight you can put on a conventional train, with so many better modes of transportation of people (planes), these ideas were mostly shelved, cause that is where this idea would have its most real life applications, is in public transport.
Nice work guys! Some bubble thoughts that occurred while watching; maybe you can use a half pipe as the track with a cylindrical "train". You probably want to use the thrust from the air to also propel the "train" so this energy does not go to waste. Some complicated aerodynamics for sure.
Radio signal over greater distances would be come a limiting factor, one would have to build in a failsafe shut off if the signal is lost, or it would just runaway until it's fuel ran out
Why was this idea scrapped? I was thinking maybe because it required a massive amount of energy compared to conventional trains. Also modern trains can go pretty fast I would say
Alternative wheel designs that allowed higher speeds were developed. It meant you could get really high speeds without having to replace the track. Building out and maintaining track is unbelievably expensive. Track that isn't the standard we've built up the infrastructure to produce at incredibly low costs is even more expensive.
@@darthkarl99 Tracks are actually only slightly more expensive than roads and certainly have a higher throughput. Yet somehow there is money for roads and not for railways
Also try going up or downhill or around corners with the track. Good luck! The maximum turning radius left to right and up and down is abysmal. To get a barely acceptable turning radius you would have to tild the track quite heavily in a curve (to basically split the turn between going up and left or right). People really don't like that (thats why they scrapped a lot of "leaning" trains - people were getting sick). So bad turn radius and puking passenger = nono.
Normal trains are already pretty noisy, and adding few loud engines certainly wouldn't help (plus the maintenance cost would be crazy). Simple is sometimes better, just put a carriage in a track with some wheels and you got a cheap way of moving a lot of things
Cost and risks is probably too high. Material to build the train with strong enough fans to hover tons of weight along with pushing and stopping it would be NASA level costs. Fuel costs would be similarly high then there is also repair and maintenance costs to consider. Anything that gets into the turbines while spinning or moving would be disastrous both safety wise and financially. It could also become a giant drone if it somehow gets ramped off its tracks
Air and trains already met in brazil! Marcopolo invented in the 80's the "aerotrem". It uses air too but in other way, very interesting too! Its a lighweight train with no power onbord for moving, the rail base have a hollow space to.use air to move the train. All the "traction" is created by it "sail". Very interesting but made for smaller travels, inside cities mainly. The most moder implementation is in the GRU airport (biggest airport below the equator). Very cool to see!
Awesome video! I'd be interested to see if you could take this a step further and use bleed air/exhaust nozzles from the jet engine to power the hover with a single power source (akin to a Harrier Jump Jet). Also, make the design more modular to allow cornering. Maybe the front carriage/module could contain the forward thrust + hover and then pull the other carriages/modules that have just a hover component? Really got my grey matter working :)
For a longer track I'd suggest making a conveyor belt (with the vertical middle section), the sections connected by hinges, and the speed of the track is controlled by sensors and PID controller to make sure the train remains in the designated place no matter the speed. This way you can also measure the speed of the train directly from the speed of the track. And if anything goes wrong and the train falls off the track, it'll be at (theoretically) zero speed with respect to ground. For additional real results, add a ducted fan to create air flow of the same speed as the train to simulate aerodynamic drag.
You should try and make the track so it will sit ontop of a miniature railway track like the one at tonbridge swimming pool or the strand in Gillingham. Then youve got a sturdy platform with an existing scaled down railway circuit and using the existing track could minimise materials used to produce the hover track 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻
Wait wait wait. Contact area has extremely little (theoretically zero) influence on the force required to move the object over the surface (i.e., friction force). Wider tires do not have more grip because they have a lager "contact patch" with the ground, no instead they are wider so that a softer (more grippy) material can be used with a higher friction coefficient. The friction force can be calculated as: F=μ·N where μ is the friction coefficient and N is the normal force (mass of the train in this case). There is no surface area in this equation because it doesn't mather!
The equation assumes perfectly hard materials. Real world tires and wheels bend and flex (resulting in all the stuff about contact patch size), which in turn causes energy loss. This can be observed in car tires - despite being the same tire and thus same material, lower pressure results in a tire that is less efficient but more grippy and vice versa.
You can make a simple maglev train runs on plain aluminium tracks as long as the train itself is creating the alternating magnetic field to repel the track. For example spinning some cylindrical magnets polarized transversally to the rotation axle. The downside is that you can't easily use the track itself for traction then, and need a separate source of propulsion.
James. If you build a long track you could drill holes in the track under the hovercraft either starting small and getting bigger or just a few and increasing the amount, if you do it right it'll be a good emergency break by letting the air through the track and slowing the craft down. I know people will say about turning off the fans, but if there's a power cut and it becomes a runaway it'll stop. Also last resort, capture wires like one aircraft carriers?
For the maglev idea, I highly recommend looking at the Inductrack design using Halbach magnet arrays. It's passive and only uses relative motion of the vehicle over the track to cause the levitation. Lawrence Livermore National Labs has some excellent white papers on it.
For the long track, just find a flat floor somewhere and just add a centre guide rail, instead of raising the track on tripods. Just stick bits of wood to the floor with double sided tape. Use a laser pointer to align them in a straight line. To make corners possible, you could make the centre channel wider in the middle, but still narrow at the points where the inwards lift-pads fire. Do you need 4 separate lift fans? Couldn't you use a single fan and some ducts and save a lot of weight and electronics? Or even tap some air from the jet exhaust or from forward motion?
This is the model train I wish I got for Christmas! Speaking of which, your jet hover train really needs a giant oval track to see what she can really do.
Physics have chosen the designs for us. If careening about while airbourne could be constrained on a track we would have done so by now. Now that said, I fully agree we have not properly addressed track and wheel design for specific speed and loads. Nice video!
what the heck??? this was literally our idea for a wind tunnel design project for my aerospace major (which I've since completed). we were always told it was an extremely dumb idea. We built a loft model that wasn't functional, but boy it was fun. This is super exciting to see!
I think for the hovercraft to not touch the center part u should use repeling magnet instead of redirection the air, because you would lost thrust and if your wonder that the magnets are going to weight it down you can just use magnetic foil which is extremely light so it wont weight it down and for the repiling we can just use normal magnets cause it wont affect anything! Hopes this help!
One thing that will help with atomizing the fuel at lower Temps is to use a hair dryer at max heat directed into the intake for a few minutes before trying to start it up. It'll heat the fuel jet enough to help with atomization. Keeping the fuel indoors or inside a vehicle with the heat on until you're ready to start the engine helps too
If you turn the hover fans to a 45 degree angle you might not need the jet engine on the top and it could brake by lowering to the track. That could be a cool idea for a part two.
watching this video, i got an idea for corners and maybe also for centering the train to the rail i think cornering with this would be as simple as just cutting the train in half and connecting them with a ring or something, so the first carriage would turn more allowing the second carriage to follow now for centering, i think using air to center it would just take off necessary hovering power right, so how about just putting small ball bearings between the train and the rail with as little contact as possible, just so that it glides smoothly
This is cool! Could forward thrust be generated by independently controlling the front amd back pairs of downward fans and tilting the train slightly to move it forwards or backwards? Them there'd be no need for a separate forward thrust engine. Thanks for your excellent videos!
As you're not (theoretically) touching your track build it out of roof battening for the 'floor' and celotex for the central fin, celotex providing a nice stable uniform profile, this should prove to be very cost effective. I'd like to see a part 2 please.
I used to live near Ditton Walk in Cambridge where there was (and afaik still is) an electrical substation with a sign saying "HOVERCRAFT DITTON WALK" - installed to provide power for the RTV 31 hover train programme in the early 70s.
For the fuel, a simple solution would be to add a heating element in the fuel line. I guess a simple big resistor inserted with a termistor circuit in a small cylinder shape enclosure (heating tank) could do the trick to always preheat part of the fuel but not the entire reservoir as it will not burn all the fuel on each run. Could be more advance than using this analog solution,but it is simple and effective and can run on the battery. I wonder if asking to a gutter/siding compagny to make you a custom track could be a good idea. They use rollers to shape is as they want with heavy wheels on site! if the wheels are changed it could bend it in a shape to create a sturdy track..maybe 2 needed to create it. the aluminum roll they use for thoses seemless gutter are very long and wait a ton,usually they use a small ceiling hitch in a cargo trailer to move the coils. Just 2 ideas i got in case it can help!
The other HUGE advantage of 2 rails over any sort of monorail is switching. 2 rails are very straightforward to switch, monorails have to bend at least a carriage length around, or as some rollercoasters do, have 2 sets of track fitted to a revolving holder. All very expensive and complex though
Few things. The reason for the original train having the jet at the back is because it doesn't interfere with guide wings. The front of the chassi applies too high downforce which in theory at least would limit its top speed since the downforce would eventually overcome the lift force so it has to allow for more frontal lift by allowing the air in front to escape underneath, not too much though since that would eventually create too much lift instead which I think is the main reason for them scrapping the jet train, that balance has to be perfect, it also has to account for down wind, head wind and side winds and various other factors. The starter motor could also have a heating element that can be toggled on or off for the engine fluid if you're picking it up again.
For braking, you can use some kind of caliper like in automotive braking but integrated into the center channel so it grips the rail, allowing you to slow down. Upscale that for passenger travel, you'd need to find a way to grip through wet tracks, but if you use hydrolics, you can probably clamp hard enough where it doesn't matter if the surface is wet. Sounds simple enough. If it works for cars, it should work on a rail system.
Great experiment! Suggestions: lift fans are of the wrong kind (these are for speed, not pressure). To keep it center: wheels! They don't carry the weight so that is allowed. On top just a large electric fan. Nice.
The beautiful part of this being a train remains that one can still power the motors from the rail with some conductors, eliminating the need for heavy onboard batteries.
Solving the Huntington oscillations problem, also has another straight forward solution: Monorail, - go look up the Louis Brennan monorail. - The Louis Brennan monorail, was gyroscopic based, did not require new rails to be forged, - and a full scale demonstration was given in 1910. Solving (partly solving) the issue with weight, and engine cost: Drop the onboard engine, - go lookup Isambard Brunel's atmospheric railway. - Isambard Brunel's atmospheric railway saw actual commercial service from 1847 to 1848. Note: The failure of Brunel's railway was caused by lacking access to proper materials. He went with leather and lard for sealing, because vulcanisation of rubber wasn't yet invented, and oil wasn't "invented" either.
Idea: you could rig this up like a scalextric car and make it get power from either side of the central guide rail, using some supercapacitors to keep the current stable, all so that you can run it infinitely and also have lower weight
Make the central guide a power system. That is connected via a contact shoe. This guide gives it power, making a bigger battery useless, resulting in a reduction in weight. And centering the vehicle.
I would love to see what you can do with this thing on a longer, perhaps circular track. I think there are some challanges in making it follow curves, without bumping into the track.
Just one suggestion, is it possible to generate electricity from the gas turbine you are using? If yes, it can generate enough power to power the electric motors for the hover quad train itself, meaning the only range limit for this train would be the fuel! This was a fun watch! Cheers Mate!🔥
Nice ! I suggest rotate the square beam 45 degrees and place the hovers at a 90 degrees angle. This needs less parts and wil go better around corners. (No need for the ply wood t shaped which I guess is not ideal)
Very Nice video! I was thinking, what if you keep this concept, but put magnets on the side of the track for as little resistence as possible, instead of using the same principale with the fans for keeping the train in place. Would that work?
Roll the track up into a hoop, match the chassis profile, then run it like a mad hamster in a wheel on fire? A new limit would be your fans versus the centrifugal force. Soo, magnets needed for sure? :p Fun, cheers.
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You really need to build out a full "oval" track so you can really let this thing off the chain. I think you could make the track more economical by using PVC "trim board", which is inherently flexible, and comes in sizes that are very similar to what you cut your plywood down to. the PVC trim board also bends into gentle curves without complaint. It's often used as a "roadbed" for garden railroads.
Great ideas! Although, with the current design, that oval would have to be *huge* to have gradual enough curves to not cause binding with the center guide of the current train. They built a really cool concept design, but it can't really turn! 😄
Banked oval too.
The oval track really needs to happen. There are some useful suggestions in this comment section that would really help it turn a bit.
wrap the train around the rail like a rollercoaster to not rely on gravity!
and remove those burning stabilizers, the rail is the stabilizer.
Circular is so much easier
4:16 A few years later hunting oscillation was pretty much solved by British Rail Engineering Limited, who developed the yaw damper (looks like a piston between the train and the bogie). This dampens the oscillations enough that they're not an issue, which enabled the development of high speed trains in Japan, France, Germany and (unsuccessfully) the UK.
how dare you slander british high speed rail. In just a few decades from now we might have trains as fast as 1980's france
@@geoffmarsh9759 is your government still actively trying to stop the high speed rail projects?
To say the U.K. was unsuccessful at high speed trains - we have had 50 years of the Intercity 125. The Advanced Passenger Train, the infamous tilting train, was flawed due to being insufficiently developed. The East Coast has run at 225 kph - 140 mph. The limiting factor with all these trains is our Victorian Railway lines. We could have developed these further, but no, politicians favoured HS2, a hugely expensive railway designed to a world class. In England. With conservation areas, expensive property, high labour costs. The cost was simply too high to achieve the political goals. Put simply, British Railways have suffered most from Political meddling. Otherwise we should be proud of the systems we have that work everyday, even if they don’t run at 180mph.
@@theneonbop understandably so, they're worried if the trains go too fast, we might stop complaining about them and complain about the government instead. They can't have that
Come on, you want a failure of high-speed rail? Just look to the US where our "high speed" is no better than the 125MPH accomplished by steam in the 50s.
Enlarge the gap in the middle of the train so it’s adaptable to life sized tracks!! Maybe you can find an inactive train track to test out!
What a great idea! Spot on solution, and potentially free too.
Needs to be designed to run on regular rail track. Then you can use miles of already built infrastructure.
Was coming here to say this. Exactly right.
Please do.
Yeah I imagine a matching pair of your engines one on each rail tethered across to each other. Or, just one hugging the profile of the rail, but then there's half as much surface area...so the "contact" pressure patch area would need to be longer.
Do you know what would have made this really cool? Making the Jet Train run on a single rail of an old railway track.
You could have opened her up and possibly made an airspeed record for a model Jet Train, a little more engineering involved, but maybe something to think about?? cool video, thanks mate.
@@CodeLeeCarter does it even need a rail? I'm struggling to see the reason it couldn't just use a flat road since it's floating above the track anyway
Was going to say the same thing.
Came to comments to say the same thing, then he doesn't have to invent the track to take it on.
Was thinking the same thing! Miles of old track available and it’s gonna be quite straight and level. The shape of the track is a known variable so marking something that hovers straddling one rail shouldn’t be too bad! I HOPE THEY DO THIS NEXT
@@neb_setabed..... So then it's just a hovercraft? Lol
I certainly don't mean to neg, but I find it interesting that you spent the entire first part of the video addressing the genius of the tapered train wheels that allow them to go around corners, then use the inherent speed limit as a motivator to find a less limited design.. and go to a design that is right back to square one when it comes to being able to go around corners ^_^
You know the lift fans will lift it, you KNOW the jet engine has plenty of thrust to push it.. I guess I'm just not certain what you accomplish with this, outside of a great bit of fun. Which is a perfectly justifiable reason! I love your content, I'm always super excited to see what you've conjured up. I just have this desire to see you do.. more. Please don't take this as anything more (or less?) than constructive criticism
I agree with you. Not as a troll etc. An objective truth of the opening statement.
I wonder if you could add a set of wheels on either side of the rail so when turning at high speeds and the inertia overcomes the air cushion it will have something to roll on. Yes it will cause resistance and drag but I'm sure you could spool up the wheels to match the rail speed so there would be minimal speed loss/part wear.
I only watch to see Emma (the talented one), not posh boy.
I think the pictures of the original shows a triangular track with a ~30 degree angle. This would bring back the conical shape where the "inside" gets more compression than the outside.
@@jeremycaylor9151 i assume similar to Maglev? They use wheels when slowing down and cornering
0:34 "powered by fans"
So.... A bit like Patreon? ☺️
More like Only fans
@@RandomBogey link?
Just women selling fans.... nothing but fans 👌🏻
@@MaNNeRz91absolutely nothing but fans.
Cults are also powered by fans, fanaticals.
The 'cone shaped' railway wheels and the shape of beer barrels have a common origin story. Barrels used to be moved in breweries, manufacturing plants and deliveries on parallel tracks (sound familiar?) and the shape of the barrel ensured they stayed on those tracks at all times. I believe the shape of the railroad wheel was derived from the knowledge gained from moving beer!
The rounded cylinder shape also makes them easier to turn on flat ground.
Since you've already established that the train can hover over any surface, I don't think you need to build a longer complete "track" per-se, but rather just find a mostly flat bit of roadway and place your central rail on that surface. Securing that rail to the ground without impeding your train will be a bit of a challenge, of course, but something I think you could figure out! ;)
Needs to be designed to run on regular rail track. Then you can use miles of already built infrastructure.
Or mount the rail to a fence.
It'd certainly be some work for HER, since HE doesn't actually work out the proper issues
If there is no need of rails won't it just be a glorified car without wheels?
You should just use an abandoned rail track as a base for your tracks and make them either clamp-on, or magnetically snap-on the rail track. Way more stable and flat than a tripod every x meters.
Also, please do a high-cut filter on the audio with the jet-engine. It is painfully loud in the high frequencies. Currently have 8 random dogs barking outside my front door. :P
4:58 There's 2 details that can make a big difference for a practical momentum curtain craft.
The outer jet being angled in at approx 45 degrees makes a more effective curtain. The inner jet is for stability and massively increases the stable hover height you can get. The "hover pad" maybe isn't the best application for momentum curtain as you don't have enough area inside the curtain to begin with.
An "open plenum" works well as a flat plate with a perimeter lip. A small feed of air to the middle will get you a low but very stable hover without the added complexity of the jet nozzles. For a smooth test track I'd wager it's better.
Guys, using a U or W shape for a rail instead of a T would probably increase your lifting efficiency, as air blown down would curve around back up the U or W and push the craft twice instead of losing the pressure from the sides.
But it would also make it more difficult to build as you'd need two exactly parallel rails
The reason it's not done is because it drastically increases the track complexity, the part that needs to be most simple
Why not build it so that it can go on a flat road?
Needs to be designed to run on regular rail track. Then you can use miles of already built infrastructure.
That square plastic duct shown in the video, cut in half and glued back to back. Perhaps at an angle, so you'd get a tall spine with shorter lips on the outer edges.
Brilliant upload, good fun! The real trick will be getting the train to ride on a curved track. Either the train will have to be short in length, riding on a large turning radius track, or the train will have to be segmented into “cars” to be able to flex on a curved track. Amazing possibilities!
Keep doing what you do 👍‼️
Another great project! It would be interesting to see if you could angle the four turbo fans such that you could use one rail of an existing rail track instead of having to build a custom track. If you can get a Harrier to hover by ducting the jet exhaust 90 degrees, perhaps you could use a similar approach to directing the bulk of the ducted fans to the top of the rail with secondary thrust applied to the sides of the rail for stabilization. You would just have to ensure that with the train sitting on the track, the bottom clears all the spikes that hold the track in place.
I love trains
I love women
@@obvra Me too
@ same but trains don’t yell
Same
I love trains too
You and Mustard should collab. This is some next-level mad-scientist obscure aerospace stuff.
The thumbnail definitely gave me massive mustard ch. vibes
Hi! If you’re planning to improve the hover train, have you considered extending the momentum curtains across the full length of the train instead of just four squares? Here’s an idea:
You could use two high-pressure fans, one for the right side and one for the left. Each fan could be split into two lines running from the back to the front, creating four lines of pressurized air. To distribute the air evenly, you could place the fans at the back of the train and use a rectangular beam with a dividing wall in the middle. Small holes along the wall could spread the air across the entire length.
Additionally, you could adjust the spacing between the lines to optimize the pressure boost at the center. It might also be worth experimenting with the design of the exhaust system to further enhance performance.
2:18 Friction, not drag
I was thinking exactly the same! It reduces friction or rolling resistance NOT drag! 😂
For anyone who wants the reason: drag is specifically caused by the fluid that an object is moving through.
@@arghjayem drag is friction in air, so close enough right? ;P
@@Feninx Not close because the shape of the object as it moves through air/fluid is also considered in drag i.e shape of the trains wheels but not the shape of the object as it moves against a solid which is only considered in friction which is what he could have used
Also at 37s
RTV31 still exists and is on display in Peterborough. You can just rock and see it on a bit of track. Amazing that nobody seems to know anything about it and it’s just sitting there.
I'd really like to see this go down a longer track at high speed. Also, it wouldn't be a ProjectAir project if the vehicle didn't crash or explode at some point.
here in the states we have this stuff called roofing flashing... its an "L" shaped piece of aluminum available in 10' lengths. it would be pretty economical to build a longer track with it. two pieces back-to-back per track section and they even have a lip that you can overlap the pieces with. it wouldnt be pretty but it would work a treat. sorted.
As others have pointed out, the weak point with this iteration of your model (and I suspect the original design) is turning radius. You could get a tighter turning radius if the lifting pads were individually shorter front to back and the train "car" was articulated (side to side) between the lift points.
Well regardless, turning radius at 250mph is limited by inertia, especially for trains carrying humans. I've ridden the bullet train from Shenzhen to Guangzhou, there are no sharp turns, and it rides super smooth and stable.
Making it compatible with existing tracks would be much more exciting. It should be possible since tracks have a bulbous shape. Wrap the air cushion around each rail so the pressure remains downward, not shear.
You could even keep the existing method of centering and turning, but flipped upside down. As the rails turn, they will come closer to the air cushion on one side, thereby pushing the train in the intended direction
Great video nonetheless, thanks! 🎉
I'd love to see a MagLev train. I've been fascinated by them since seeing Prof. Eric Laithwaite's Royal Institution Christmas Lectures. He wrote a book called 'Propulsion Without Wheels' that details the design process. I got the book but didn't build the train!
This is my first time watching your videos and I am absolutely blown away. Subscribed right away.
I love you guys.
I had never heard of that train concept, very interesting
Hello from France, great video.
The French Aérotrain was developed in the 60s until the early 80s by the French engineer Jean Bertin.
He built several prototypes.
It reached 515km/h (318 miles/h) in 1981.
Finally the project was abandoned and replaced by the French TGV high speed train.
TGV means "Train à Grande Vitesse" which means "High Speed Train".
Yeah... he mentions at 13:26 that he based his design on the french one ;)
@@alfrecletero Thanks, you are right. I watched 70% of the video and missed it 😊
The main disadvantage of this type of train is that every individual car needs its own lifting fans. Can get away with forward propulsion only at the front. But the efficiency gains of multi-car trains is vastly diminished when each car has an engine requiring maintenance and they have to be synchronized to ride at the same height. The couplings have to contend with the vertical axis more than a ground bound train would.
YES YES YES please try to build a maglev. But i heard its quite challenge. What i though of would be a mixture of this hovercraft and the maglev. Like to use the magnets to propel the train, but not to make it levitate. Maybe this could help reduce the needed power, by guiding some of the air that is around it anyways under it, so it sits on a nice air cushion :D
3:26 Did you print two sets of wheels, or did you just flip one?
Great engineering advancements and learning. Thaks for sharing, I was wondering about centering when I first saw your design interesting to see it come up as I was thinking it was going to be a problem, and it turned out it was, nice to see you overcome it. Though, don't forget about weight, trains took off cause of just can't beat the amount of weight you can put on a conventional train, with so many better modes of transportation of people (planes), these ideas were mostly shelved, cause that is where this idea would have its most real life applications, is in public transport.
In reality this whole video is an excuse for James to ride on a steam train
Really loved the trip to the train museum. Feels like you've made a real step up with your content!
make a super fast steam train that would be the coolest ever
Nice work guys! Some bubble thoughts that occurred while watching; maybe you can use a half pipe as the track with a cylindrical "train". You probably want to use the thrust from the air to also propel the "train" so this energy does not go to waste. Some complicated aerodynamics for sure.
Needs to be designed to run on regular rail track. Then you can use miles of already built railways.
Radio signal over greater distances would be come a limiting factor, one would have to build in a failsafe shut off if the signal is lost, or it would just runaway until it's fuel ran out
@@nemesismcc They already make $20 failsafes for RC cars for exactly this purpose.
It would be fun to see this thing fitted to an actual train track
Agree
Why was this idea scrapped? I was thinking maybe because it required a massive amount of energy compared to conventional trains. Also modern trains can go pretty fast I would say
Alternative wheel designs that allowed higher speeds were developed. It meant you could get really high speeds without having to replace the track. Building out and maintaining track is unbelievably expensive. Track that isn't the standard we've built up the infrastructure to produce at incredibly low costs is even more expensive.
@@darthkarl99 Tracks are actually only slightly more expensive than roads and certainly have a higher throughput. Yet somehow there is money for roads and not for railways
Also try going up or downhill or around corners with the track. Good luck! The maximum turning radius left to right and up and down is abysmal. To get a barely acceptable turning radius you would have to tild the track quite heavily in a curve (to basically split the turn between going up and left or right). People really don't like that (thats why they scrapped a lot of "leaning" trains - people were getting sick). So bad turn radius and puking passenger = nono.
Normal trains are already pretty noisy, and adding few loud engines certainly wouldn't help (plus the maintenance cost would be crazy). Simple is sometimes better, just put a carriage in a track with some wheels and you got a cheap way of moving a lot of things
Cost and risks is probably too high. Material to build the train with strong enough fans to hover tons of weight along with pushing and stopping it would be NASA level costs. Fuel costs would be similarly high then there is also repair and maintenance costs to consider. Anything that gets into the turbines while spinning or moving would be disastrous both safety wise and financially. It could also become a giant drone if it somehow gets ramped off its tracks
Air and trains already met in brazil!
Marcopolo invented in the 80's the "aerotrem". It uses air too but in other way, very interesting too! Its a lighweight train with no power onbord for moving, the rail base have a hollow space to.use air to move the train. All the "traction" is created by it "sail". Very interesting but made for smaller travels, inside cities mainly.
The most moder implementation is in the GRU airport (biggest airport below the equator). Very cool to see!
This is actually a really cool concept for a train
true
The Tim Traveler has a whole video on them.
I wonder if you could adapt this for use on an abandoned railway track for a longer run. Great video as always! Well done!
Budget:
Engines: 90%
Main body: 5%
Tea + other liquids: 5%
Track... maybe next time...
Awesome video! I'd be interested to see if you could take this a step further and use bleed air/exhaust nozzles from the jet engine to power the hover with a single power source (akin to a Harrier Jump Jet).
Also, make the design more modular to allow cornering. Maybe the front carriage/module could contain the forward thrust + hover and then pull the other carriages/modules that have just a hover component? Really got my grey matter working :)
Had me thinking the same thing, minimise the amount of engines at the front and use one hover set per carriage
This exists in Japan using magnets a train can go 500km/h while it being quite and not bumpy
Oh ya it called maglev
@@harukih2772Magnetic Levitation. Probably the future of trains.
Yes, please do a magnify train, but with a long test track. Great video, thanks you two.
So good to see more of Emma. Encoré. Anyway, this is *very* Thunderbirds!
instant nerd crush.
Would love to see a maglev model train!! My son loves your videos. We’ve been watching for the past year or so! 😊😊
1:44 Steam trains are wildly inefficient
Did I get pinned?
No
For a longer track I'd suggest making a conveyor belt (with the vertical middle section), the sections connected by hinges, and the speed of the track is controlled by sensors and PID controller to make sure the train remains in the designated place no matter the speed. This way you can also measure the speed of the train directly from the speed of the track. And if anything goes wrong and the train falls off the track, it'll be at (theoretically) zero speed with respect to ground. For additional real results, add a ducted fan to create air flow of the same speed as the train to simulate aerodynamic drag.
0:37 Friction, not drag
Lmao
came here to say this
2:37 *
You should try and make the track so it will sit ontop of a miniature railway track like the one at tonbridge swimming pool or the strand in Gillingham. Then youve got a sturdy platform with an existing scaled down railway circuit and using the existing track could minimise materials used to produce the hover track 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻
Wait wait wait. Contact area has extremely little (theoretically zero) influence on the force required to move the object over the surface (i.e., friction force). Wider tires do not have more grip because they have a lager "contact patch" with the ground, no instead they are wider so that a softer (more grippy) material can be used with a higher friction coefficient. The friction force can be calculated as: F=μ·N where μ is the friction coefficient and N is the normal force (mass of the train in this case). There is no surface area in this equation because it doesn't mather!
Lol, no. There's a reason why tanks and other heavy vehicles have treads instead of wheels.
The equation assumes perfectly hard materials. Real world tires and wheels bend and flex (resulting in all the stuff about contact patch size), which in turn causes energy loss. This can be observed in car tires - despite being the same tire and thus same material, lower pressure results in a tire that is less efficient but more grippy and vice versa.
Also u is calculated with area or smth iirc
You can make a simple maglev train runs on plain aluminium tracks as long as the train itself is creating the alternating magnetic field to repel the track. For example spinning some cylindrical magnets polarized transversally to the rotation axle. The downside is that you can't easily use the track itself for traction then, and need a separate source of propulsion.
James.
If you build a long track you could drill holes in the track under the hovercraft either starting small and getting bigger or just a few and increasing the amount, if you do it right it'll be a good emergency break by letting the air through the track and slowing the craft down.
I know people will say about turning off the fans, but if there's a power cut and it becomes a runaway it'll stop.
Also last resort, capture wires like one aircraft carriers?
For the maglev idea, I highly recommend looking at the Inductrack design using Halbach magnet arrays. It's passive and only uses relative motion of the vehicle over the track to cause the levitation. Lawrence Livermore National Labs has some excellent white papers on it.
Fantastic work, James! 😃
But yeah, a round track would be great!
Anyway, stay safe there with your family! 🖖😊
Another vote for making it work on existing train tracks!
You could also try a thrust reversal system for speed management. Love the videos, looking forward to more!
For stabilization purposes, I suggest a mild camber in the lifting towers, to act as a dihedral.
For the long track, just find a flat floor somewhere and just add a centre guide rail, instead of raising the track on tripods. Just stick bits of wood to the floor with double sided tape. Use a laser pointer to align them in a straight line.
To make corners possible, you could make the centre channel wider in the middle, but still narrow at the points where the inwards lift-pads fire.
Do you need 4 separate lift fans? Couldn't you use a single fan and some ducts and save a lot of weight and electronics? Or even tap some air from the jet exhaust or from forward motion?
Brilliant as always. Anything with trains is a super bonus for me ❤❤❤❤
This is the model train I wish I got for Christmas! Speaking of which, your jet hover train really needs a giant oval track to see what she can really do.
Physics have chosen the designs for us.
If careening about while airbourne could be constrained on a track we would have done so by now.
Now that said, I fully agree we have not properly addressed track and wheel design for specific speed and loads.
Nice video!
Now make a reverse air hockey table.
what the heck??? this was literally our idea for a wind tunnel design project for my aerospace major (which I've since completed). we were always told it was an extremely dumb idea. We built a loft model that wasn't functional, but boy it was fun. This is super exciting to see!
I think for the hovercraft to not touch the center part u should use repeling magnet instead of redirection the air, because you would lost thrust and if your wonder that the magnets are going to weight it down you can just use magnetic foil which is extremely light so it wont weight it down and for the repiling we can just use normal magnets cause it wont affect anything! Hopes this help!
You know its a good day when ProjectAir uploads🔥🔥🔥
One thing that will help with atomizing the fuel at lower Temps is to use a hair dryer at max heat directed into the intake for a few minutes before trying to start it up. It'll heat the fuel jet enough to help with atomization. Keeping the fuel indoors or inside a vehicle with the heat on until you're ready to start the engine helps too
If you turn the hover fans to a 45 degree angle you might not need the jet engine on the top and it could brake by lowering to the track. That could be a cool idea for a part two.
watching this video, i got an idea for corners and maybe also for centering the train to the rail
i think cornering with this would be as simple as just cutting the train in half and connecting them with a ring or something, so the first carriage would turn more allowing the second carriage to follow
now for centering, i think using air to center it would just take off necessary hovering power right, so how about just putting small ball bearings between the train and the rail with as little contact as possible, just so that it glides smoothly
oh hell yeah perfect timing for this video to come out. im so invested in these jet experiments lol
This is cool! Could forward thrust be generated by independently controlling the front amd back pairs of downward fans and tilting the train slightly to move it forwards or backwards? Them there'd be no need for a separate forward thrust engine. Thanks for your excellent videos!
Miss Emma is a very capable assistant 👍
As you're not (theoretically) touching your track build it out of roof battening for the 'floor' and celotex for the central fin, celotex providing a nice stable uniform profile, this should prove to be very cost effective. I'd like to see a part 2 please.
I used to live near Ditton Walk in Cambridge where there was (and afaik still is) an electrical substation with a sign saying "HOVERCRAFT DITTON WALK" - installed to provide power for the RTV 31 hover train programme in the early 70s.
For the fuel, a simple solution would be to add a heating element in the fuel line. I guess a simple big resistor inserted with a termistor circuit in a small cylinder shape enclosure (heating tank) could do the trick to always preheat part of the fuel but not the entire reservoir as it will not burn all the fuel on each run. Could be more advance than using this analog solution,but it is simple and effective and can run on the battery.
I wonder if asking to a gutter/siding compagny to make you a custom track could be a good idea. They use rollers to shape is as they want with heavy wheels on site!
if the wheels are changed it could bend it in a shape to create a sturdy track..maybe 2 needed to create it.
the aluminum roll they use for thoses seemless gutter are very long and wait a ton,usually they use a small ceiling hitch in a cargo trailer to move the coils.
Just 2 ideas i got in case it can help!
The other HUGE advantage of 2 rails over any sort of monorail is switching. 2 rails are very straightforward to switch, monorails have to bend at least a carriage length around, or as some rollercoasters do, have 2 sets of track fitted to a revolving holder. All very expensive and complex though
Few things.
The reason for the original train having the jet at the back is because it doesn't interfere with guide wings.
The front of the chassi applies too high downforce which in theory at least would limit its top speed since the downforce would eventually overcome the lift force so it has to allow for more frontal lift by allowing the air in front to escape underneath, not too much though since that would eventually create too much lift instead which I think is the main reason for them scrapping the jet train, that balance has to be perfect, it also has to account for down wind, head wind and side winds and various other factors.
The starter motor could also have a heating element that can be toggled on or off for the engine fluid if you're picking it up again.
Very much enjoy all your vids and your brilliant engineering.
For braking, you can use some kind of caliper like in automotive braking but integrated into the center channel so it grips the rail, allowing you to slow down. Upscale that for passenger travel, you'd need to find a way to grip through wet tracks, but if you use hydrolics, you can probably clamp hard enough where it doesn't matter if the surface is wet. Sounds simple enough. If it works for cars, it should work on a rail system.
Cool concept. I find myself wondering what would happen to this train if there were rocks on track or if there was a snowdrift.
Relly Nice Video with cool old Tecnics. Can someone please tell me exactly which fans are on the train?
Great experiment! Suggestions: lift fans are of the wrong kind (these are for speed, not pressure). To keep it center: wheels! They don't carry the weight so that is allowed. On top just a large electric fan. Nice.
Building it to fit an actual train track would give you basically unlimited track.
14:49: That track ain’t gonna be long enough. 😂😂
We need an afterburner build for your micro jet engine!!!!!! That would be one hell of a build
BUILD A HOVERBOARD using this same concept!!! DO IT!!!
The beautiful part of this being a train remains that one can still power the motors from the rail with some conductors, eliminating the need for heavy onboard batteries.
Solving the Huntington oscillations problem, also has another straight forward solution: Monorail, - go look up the Louis Brennan monorail.
- The Louis Brennan monorail, was gyroscopic based, did not require new rails to be forged, - and a full scale demonstration was given in 1910.
Solving (partly solving) the issue with weight, and engine cost: Drop the onboard engine, - go lookup Isambard Brunel's atmospheric railway.
- Isambard Brunel's atmospheric railway saw actual commercial service from 1847 to 1848.
Note: The failure of Brunel's railway was caused by lacking access to proper materials. He went with leather and lard for sealing, because vulcanisation of rubber wasn't yet invented, and oil wasn't "invented" either.
Idea: you could rig this up like a scalextric car and make it get power from either side of the central guide rail, using some supercapacitors to keep the current stable, all so that you can run it infinitely and also have lower weight
Next progression, Banked track to go round corners, accelrometer controlled thrust to push more air to the inside of the corner
18:26 There we can recognise the true British. Actually, I would love to see a longer test track for this hovertrain.
One of the best channels i found last year
Make the central guide a power system. That is connected via a contact shoe. This guide gives it power, making a bigger battery useless, resulting in a reduction in weight. And centering the vehicle.
I would love to see what you can do with this thing on a longer, perhaps circular track. I think there are some challanges in making it follow curves, without bumping into the track.
Strong Thunderbirds vibes with this one... well done!
Just one suggestion, is it possible to generate electricity from the gas turbine you are using? If yes, it can generate enough power to power the electric motors for the hover quad train itself, meaning the only range limit for this train would be the fuel!
This was a fun watch! Cheers Mate!🔥
Nice ! I suggest rotate the square beam 45 degrees and place the hovers at a 90 degrees angle. This needs less parts and wil go better around corners. (No need for the ply wood t shaped which I guess is not ideal)
Very Nice video! I was thinking, what if you keep this concept, but put magnets on the side of the track for as little resistence as possible, instead of using the same principale with the fans for keeping the train in place. Would that work?
Roll the track up into a hoop, match the chassis profile, then run it like a mad hamster in a wheel on fire? A new limit would be your fans versus the centrifugal force. Soo, magnets needed for sure? :p Fun, cheers.
A maglev train! That could be soooo COOL!😮😮😮😮😮😮😮