Designing A Next-Gen Ionic Thruster! (For Flight)
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 16 сен 2022
- If jet turbines are the evolution of a propeller, what is the evolution of ionic thrust? In my attempt to answer that - I built a next-gen ionic thruster, and only shocked myself about a dozen times in the process. Thank you to Steven Barret at MIT for providing his airplane footage, and to Keysight for supporting this video.
KEYSIGHT WORLD: INNOVATE: keysig.ht/wc2rEQ
Check out the new merch here: crowdmade.com/collections/pla...
Thank you to John for providing the powersource!
Support / Follow Plasma Channel on:
Patreon: / plasmachannel
Twitter: / channelplasma
Facebook: / plasmachannel
Instagram: Plasma_Channel_Official
=======================
**Music credits**
======================
Title screen music:
Song: Sappheiros - Awake
Music provided by Vlog No Copyright Music.
Creative Commons - Attribution 3.0 Unported
Video Link: • Sappheiros - Awake (Vl...
All other music provided by Epidemic Sounds
I am also a television actor! Follow me on IMDB
My IMDB: www.imdb.com/name/nm6578948/
#experiment #innovation #flight 
Наука
![Finesse2Tymes - Letter to the Devil [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rRvm-U7MTQ8/mqdefault.jpg)
What an incredible build! I'm blown away (at 2.3 m/sec)
Thanks Daniel! I really want to get that speed up to 3 meters a second for the next build, and double the effective airflow as well.
I would offer to help but my practical skills with plasma so far is a cut grape in the microwave. 😂😂😂👍🏼
@@PlasmaChannel duuuude, nice build! You beat me to it. Great work.
Many variables to optimize. Fuel type too, for use in space.
Maybe Elon will buy it. He's still on version 1 with his satellites 😅
@@PlasmaChannel how you worded this makes me think of a ducted 'fan' setup, like the Dyson fan
2:30
2:30
My thoughts on improvements:
1) Ducted airflow. Preventing air from moving out of the system until the end.
2) Adding a nozzle. The airflow velocity increases due to the constriction of the tube radius, therefore after the acceleration, you could decrease the tube radius to give more thrust.
3) Adding barbs to the emitters. Charge accumulates more intensely in sharper locations and will be emitted more freely.
4) Magnetic fields. Given the charges passing from one area to another are known, having solenoids creating magnetic fields around the ducts that induce a more significant flow would help the movement.
Yeah thinking the same, a surround around the thruster to contain the air and maybe a cone at the end to accelerate the airflow and focus thrust, similar to a jet engine
I see an obvious improvement by making the electrodes have a teardrop cross section so they are more aerodinamic
I hadn't thought of magnets, that's an interesting idea!
If it's going in a plane I'm not sure ducting would make that much sense, right? Perhaps as a test, but structurally, that would be part of the aircraft I would think.
I think coils or magnets would add too much weight.
Interesting! I built an ion propelled aircraft grid that produced a breeze for my HS Science fair in 1966. Had to use high voltage rectifier tubes and a massive hand made capacitor for the construction. HUGE power supply for a little thrust. First saw the concept in Popular Mechanics.
This is incredibly cool thank you for sharing
@notfiveo the body is electric 🤷🏼♂️
Which goes back to this things main problem. Lots of weight, little to almost no thrust based on the weight.
Also why it is considered in space flight for long mission probes. It can get up to fast speeds but because it have almost no thrust it's gonna take months/years to get there.
IE: It will never produce enough thrust to power a plane on earth.
Add the entire build in a
1. tube, it will increate the thrust theoretically as it will create a pressure difference,
2. as well add at the input a donut shaped intake it will make another pressure difference
3. to pull more air, another thrust boost is to increase the tube incake and add some holes on the side, similar design as the blow torches which pull air from sides based on the pressure
Hope you read this, i wanna see it in action :)
Hi. Mechanical Engineer here.
1. He should make a venturi tunnel. The different diameter of the tunnel creates an high pressure zone and a low pressure zone which can be used to place the engine at the perfect spot along the x-axis to take advantage of the venturi effect.
2. The donut doesn't help drag more air in, it reduces drag of the air that is about to be sucked in by reducing tubulence.
3. The airholes in a blowtorch use the same theory as a spraypaint gun. The pressure difference are created by the speed of the gas in the main chamber. Fast speed of gas makes the pressure smaller, thus sucking the air in the small hole at atmospheric pressure into the main airstream. In a paintgun It would be the air compressor air moving vwry fast, and in the smaller hole you have your paint resorvoir at atmospheric pressure veing sucked along with the pressurized air..
First of all 2.3m/s is like incredible for homemade device.
1. You would have covered the sides so that air current won't leak,
2. A constant DC supply would be better instead of pulsed
3. The wind speed meter you have used was having comparatively very heavy, so actually you might be getting more speed
A constant DC PSU probably wouldn't have worked, since you need super high voltage peaks for the plasma discharge. The pulsing supply allows for waveform collapse, which produces huge voltage spikes, just like an ignition coil from a vehicle.
So unless there is a super simple 100kV DC PSU out there, the pulsed supply is the way to go.
Added extras
1. What about coneing the different sections so new air could enter but the air in the chamber could be accelerated
@@operator8014 A faster pulse or constant DC would provide more power but you're right that it would make high voltage spikes harder, so I don't know if there exists a good solution for this, at least not easily.
@@Tletna Just higher frequency and higher voltage, which takes more power and a larger coil to generate.
So a bigger coil, being driven harder, with faster circuit oscillation, would all mean more thrust, since the plasma is being pushed and pulled more forcefully.
@@operator8014 Would somehow compressing the air allow the plasma to grab more air? Like if the first stage pushed into a cone, would a second and third stage be able to grab that air better?
The light dimmed plasma shots were off the charts cool.
L
Definitely want to see more on the ionic thrusters. Great work!. This is an amazing build man, it's incredible!.
Hi, I've been interested in ion wind ever since that first youtube video of the ion flyer. I saw your build on another video and had to watch it. You've outdone yourself, and have inspired me to try a build.
Cheers
Quite similar thoughts all over:
1) shield airflow, add foil covers (minding weight increasement
2) play with intake air density, or gas composition therefore increasing or decreasng in output efficiency
3) adjust thicknessand weave pattern of the emitter wiring
Lets see part 2 ! Have fun building that engine :)
I agree with 3, spiral cone design for the electrodes would be my modification.
Those were my thoughts 💭
Brilliant!
the wiring could even end up being some airfoil shape to increase effective surface area, and control drag levels
@@FrostCraftedMC drop shaped wires. why not!
@@5umopapisdn5 that was my immediate thought.. playing with the ratio on staggering on this test unit and finding the curve to duplicate in 3D
1. Enclose the thruster side walls
2. Experiment with various mesh densities on the 3 stages
3. Try different frame materials
Finally mount this thing on a little blimp. It would be awesome :)
Yes, I was thinking the same thing, you must be an experienced and talented maker
Enclosing will reduce the thrust as thrust is generated by gathering the surrounding air giving it a linear velocity.
The the first middle distance & middle last distance should be at 2:1 ratio.
Semi enclosed design would be ok.
In the first mesh wires should be tried thin and denser.
@@3s-sahajselfstudy what about a funnel after each stage? That way each stage can still draw in air from its surroundings without losing much to scatter
@BezBog you sir answered exactly as i would have but the addition of the blimp.... AMAZING
Definitely want to see more on the ionic thrusters. Great work!
I like the way you explained everything and also I like the design it's so cool when you turn off the light. That was awesome
Inefficiencies:
1) Ion path scattering. Position the electrodes so that the ions all flow parallel, ideally. Otherwise their non uniform direction makes the overall thrust vector hit the wall of the device which eliminates much of the airflow.
2) Ion pathing. A dielectric rod ending at an oppositely charged sphere or grid will make the ions want to flow towards it, thus preventing them from diverging. Otherwise they may get attracted by other charges around the device and make the air diverge. Ideally, enclose the whole air flow to have control over what your ions are pushing and to recover a portion of you spent energy via the sphere/grid.
3) Electrode shape. Round them up on one side to make charge (and air) only flow the other side. Use needles. Otherwise ions will set up tiny back currents to the opposite direction.
4) Materials. Use hollowed frames to reduce the weight (which decreases thrust) by a lot. Good ones are Expanded Polystyrene and Kapton tape. Don't wait for Graphene windows.
5) Temperature. Use thermionic emission to get more ions. Cheap tungsten needles do exist. This is not an inefficiency btw, more like an improvement.
6) Air channel geometry. Close the walls to protect against side air currents. Otherwise air may not flow linearly, especially if ion path scattering is not dealt with. This necessitates that you build an appropriate container to facilitate smooth flow otherwise air can get stuck momentarily, creating "traffic" that may slow down the net flow locally thus reducing thrust.
7) Gravity. Always position the apparatus so it blows downward to take advantage of gravity, otherwise it is always eating away at your thrust as it doesn't let the air flow in line with the cylinder. Thermionic emission may fix that up a bit as hotter air tends to rise. You need to find the perfect balance with these two.
8) Another improvement. Use Integza's golden spiral fan to set up two air vortices that serve to both push as well as pull the air to and from the desired direction, and help counteract the side effects of both gravity and thermionic emission.
And that theyr impossible to power
@@floridamangonwild hopefully someone makes a huge breakthrough in battery tech that allows makes them lighter while simultaneously making them more energy dense and less harmful for the environment. Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that something like that will happen soon.
@@yummyhershey5902 or ever there was a guy in the 1900s that built a water powered car and was murdered along with the plans for it most likely drom an oil company perhaps someone will re make it
@@yummyhershey5902I don't think batteries will be the solution for this technology. Using fuels to provide the energy density needed for electrokinetic propulsion will result in drastically increased fuel efficiency. Check the Thomas Townsend Brown patent for the electrokinetic flame jet generator. You can get several million volts with a traditional jet engine running kerosene, if you ionize the exhaust and then collect the accelerated charges at the end of a nozzle and feed the excess power back in to the exhaust at ever increasing voltages. Ion thrusters efficiency can be as high as 110 N/kW or more scaling with voltage, so augmenting a normal flame jet would increase the efficiency without drastically lowering the thrust. In fact because the system is efficiently converting chemical energy to electrical, and then recycling it to generate higher speed, higher voltage exhaust, there is a net gain on thrust as well as efficiency. Brown wanted to exploit the ionized gas cloud left in the exhaust to form the negative electrode for the ion craft, to drastically increase both the voltage and the electrode gap between the positively charge ions generated at the leading edge of the airframe and the negative cloud. This works fantastically well in the upper atmosphere/ionosphere, where the ionized air is influenced at a long range by the high voltage. This can be further augmented with magnetic field control for additional power recovery during descent. See also the work of Jean Pierre Petit PhD, who shows how Magnetohydrodynamic engines can manipulate the skin plasma around such craft to achieve supersonic speeds without generating sonic booms.
@@yummyhershey5902 liquid fuel is just better, you have a much higher power to weight density that even with something like hydrogen, you can make a hybrid electric craft use liquid fuel generators and be more efficient at scale.
suggestion: use motors and a sensor to run a computer program to find the "sweetest" of spots. basically the program would test, move, and test again until it finds the optimal arrangment.
Yes. Manual testing is old-school
Go a step further, vary the voltage at each stage. Let the program control each stage's voltage. Let it run and then interperit the data.
Go even furtger and find the relationship between the strength of the electric field and acceleration of air molecules. Then you could calculate optimal spacings and voltages.
@@nicholasweiss4662 Nah - for that you would need to know basically ALL parameters - that includes everything like surface-imperfections of the wire used. That level of simulation is not practical for this.
@@ABaumstumpf That depends on the accuracy you want. You can make assumptions for simulations like say the surface roughness is equal all over and is X, where X is a area you measured on the rod. for the fields you can assume it moves the same all around except for metal surfaces. the values needed for thinks like dielectric constants are known. the air molecules on the other hand i do have to agree, simulating all molecules is not practical. but you can measure the properties of a group of molecules e.g. velocity, pressure etc. With those assumptions in there you could say something on the line of "i am XX% sure it can preform at YY". its done in engineering all the time you do have to keep the standard deviation into account when building. in case of a thruster you would be worried about the lower bound if the value for thrust
Thank you ... The idea of lining up the thrusters genius ... I've been trying to amp up my thruster
A man of many talents, not only do you understand the science behind it, you also have the handyman skills to build and test your ideas.
Couple of points i want to share:
1. will using a net instead of copper wire imropve the airflow? More surface area?
2. You should enclose the apparatus in a dielectric matarial so that air doesn't leak
3. it could also be the multiplier of yours, less current maybe?
4.why not try different metals?
5. you could also try to Use different voltages at the stages?
6. Maybe also try different nozzels at the output?
7. Force some air from the front?
8. Introduce magnetic fields as they interact with the electrons? Permanent magnet, changing fields?
10. Since it doesn't heats up you could use foaming 3d printed parts (foaming plastic are lot lighter then regular plastic) bringing the total weight down?
If we are adding nozzle then the whole thing should be enclosed or should have a body
@@sanathacharya616 said that in point 2
@@tvishmaychoudhary69 at the same time iam thinking about air flowing backword cause there isn't that amount of pressure for the air to flow through the nozzle
how about covering it in a material so it doesn't leak, but create some kind of gills, which scoop air from the sides and route it through the device?
For 1, he'll need to be careful to not block flow. For 5, he could, but he's also changing spacing. There are a few degrees of freedom here and he should pin a few down.
This is actually my first time learning about this kind of thruster. Never thought something like this could exist.
This is 20+ year old tech.
@@Stark81766 only declassified recently
@@Stark81766 in 30 years we will start to see stuff from the 90s
The microwave-plasma thrusters are interesting to watch too
Check out Big Clive's videos he did a good one on something called a vintage mountain breeze ioniser.
10 Yr old video and was upto 30 Yr old at that time!
ruclips.net/video/OgynsEveujQ/видео.html
That's what I call inspiring, qualitative video.
I just subscribed because I'm feeling I will like your videos !
I keep coming back to this video. Thank you for sharing your work! Go Ions!
Actually did a project with the old ionic lifters back in high school for the science fair! Try applying a dielectric/insulator to the leading edge of the negative/ground electrode. Additionally, lengthening the (negative) electrode allows for more surface area for the charged air ions to apply force to. Just two suggestions!
A long time ago I remember reading that using sand paper on the copper wires made more lift.
A few thoughts: (1) An inlet funnel on the front to increase air draw & compress the air intake, (2) a cover (cowl) to stop the air from escaping out the sides , (3) more segments, (4) perhaps testing segment distances using the Fibonacci Sequence, as the Golden Ratio is common in fluid dynamics such as in cyclones and propeller vortexes.
I was going to say the same!
All of this plus making it smaller and then having a whole array of them clustered together.
all of this plus: a dramatic surface increase for the negative pole
Increase the rows of positive wires (a lot), making them thinner at the same time. It will give more surface area for the air molecules to be ionized and still having sharp cylindrical edges due to the thinner wire.
Perfect
What a great project! I think we should try increasing the diameter of the frame and the number of positive charge wires. Experimenting with different metals would be exciting. Finally creating a nozzle type frame work to direct the flow towards a smaller diameter end might increase the thrust.
I think the data you collected is amazing and well thought out. Time to scale up. Not a lot but bigger. This could revolutionize the way we travel. I could see this on a massive scale,possibly flying cars. I really loved your rig. And the different colors used. Great job. You definitely have a subscriber here. Keep up the good work you do.
I am absolutely shocked (no pun intended) that this isn't 3D printed. It seems like every construction video I watch these days, from droids to racecars, are built using 3D printing. Your acrylic work looks way better. And this technology is quite interesting and I'm glad to have seen this.
Thank you, I appreciate that!
@@PlasmaChannel *stop preaching junk science, will ya?*
@@PlasmaChannel ohh can you make a larger version? Or one that pushes something? That would also be a cool science experiment!
@@Only_God_Is_Allah_SWT why you so toxic
@@zer0g0 hes upset because his body actively repels bitches
1. Put the "engine" in one sealed pipe with open ends, you have air/pressure losses on the sides.
2. Make it shorter, the longer it is, the more ineficient will be. Use 3 separate HV generators, 1 for each coil, and reduce the "engine" size from 50 cm to 10 cm. If it is done properly, the HV coils shouldn't interact with each other, even if there is 1 cm spacing between them.
3. Use a thermal camera to see the flow of the air. See if the temperature of the air (in) hot/cold-dry/wet-low/hight density, influence the output pressure.
4. Apply the same principles in jet engines-air compression-, start with a big fan(coil) , than a middle one, than a small one at end to increase the pressure.
5. Chance the shape of the coil. I would say that if your thruster coil have the shape of a triangle vortex(such as a tornado), will dramatically increase the pressure. Use only 1 coil long enough to create the electrical/plasma vortex.
6. Use a magnet with donout shape at the end to see if he concentrate the plasma flux in one point, thus increasing the pressure.
7. Search on google "how to increase the power of ionic thruster" :)
8.) Go on PDFDRIVE-dot-com and search for "ion thruster:.
You have 933 "free :D" professional books to assist in your journey.
Well said!
all great points. also this is probably more fun than practical, but adding on to point 3 he could also use schlieren imaging to visualize the airflow.
yeah cool
How do youtube commenters know everything
Yeah, What they said. lol
This is simply amazing. Just think about all the applications, too many possibilities
Awesome project wow 🔥🔥🔥 can't wait to see version 2
This is awesome! Great video
👍🏻
hey action lab
YOU KNOW IT!!!!
James! You gotta make one of these!
is it really THE action lab?
I read a paper once where they grew carbon nanotubes on the electrode and it dramatically dropped the voltage required for air breakdown. I think it was used for some sort of sensor. Copper is a common substrate to grow tubes on, so copper wire should be possible. You need a catalyst and a carbon containing gas and relatively high temps.
This was an awesome build, I just wonder what kinda results you could get if you managed to have the segments adjustable during operations both in power control and spacing
Looks amazing and such a simple design (with know how that is ) .Fantastic work !
1.) Design it such a way that you're not stacking the stages "in series" but put them in parallel.
2.) Add roughness to the electrodes so the charged particles escape easier but not enough roughness to start arcing between electrodes.
3.) Your power source looks like push-pull topology converter which tends to be less efficient. Use a resonant topology with soft-switching like an LLC converter.
he did have them in parallel, that's how he was able to easily disconnect them without rewiring them
@@The_Racr1 Correct, but I didn't mean the electrical property I was talking about the airflow. This way the cascade is setup so that the airflow from one stage flows through another stage which is essentially a series connection. If the stages were placed next to each other, it would be like a parallel connection. I think this way it will get rid of that logarithmic increase in thrust and it will rather add up.
@@Astri.electronics I think he was trying to achieve multistage acceleration, since kinetics energy is squared with speed but linear with mass. Having a parallel setup increase the airflow by 3 times (mass) but they all travel at the stage 1 speed(which is the same as just build a bigger engine). But if he could accelerate the same air 3 times, and twice the Air speed. He gets 4 times the kinetic energy. Although I agree with another comment on here, where the voltage steps up from stage 1 to stage 2, and functions similar to a turbo engine where the air gets compressed (loaded with more potential energy) as it travels down the stages. But instead of increase the potential energy, the kinetic energy is increased. Sorry for the long reply. If you meant parallel in a different way, please do enlighten me. I'd love see a drawing of sorts.
Well, I think it's official. We're in a new Age of the Inventor. The idea that an individual person can experiment meaningfully with ionic thrusters is mind-blowing!
Yh its really empowering in an age where it feels like everything has already been discovered and only huge tech companies can innovate technology
@@gaminikokawalage7124 Theres more undiscovered then is discovered. We just assume that's fact. We barely hit any of the biological or small scale tech and alchemy is still evolving. We still don't know how many microstructures function in our reality versus what we see. Some things we just don't understand and is still in discovery.
RUclips does allow more libraries for people to learn and study for free!
@@ixinor you're right. And its great how much access to knowledge we have through the internet and it's like we're on the brink of a lot of ground breaking tech. Like machine learning, quantum computing etc
@@ixinor what are you talking about, we've completed the ultimate goal of alchemy - making gold from any substance. The problem is that it's so incredibly energy inefficient that the value of gold produced does not cover the costs.
Possible ways of improving efficiency includes:
1. Cover the system in a shroud to stop it scavenging unionised air from the sides.
2. Improve the aerodynamics of the ionising elements to improve flow characteristics, eg. Areofoil type shutters instead of wires and tubes.
3. Create an venturi restriction on the outlet.
4. Increase the number of stages.
5. Create a more aerodynamic shape on the inlet intake.
6. Ionise the inside walls too.
And yes, I saw your reconfigured model. That is definitely a step in the right direction.
A 5mph wind is a nice demonstration and you did some solid work there. I like it! It won't get anything off the ground at this scale, though. If you square the cross section of those grids, you might cube the output. If it's still too heavy to power an airplane, I would wager it could at least power an airship like a dirigible.
Making the ground electrodes have a wing profile to avoid having turbulence right behind them could be one maybe? :)
This thruster may be ionic, but the content you put out is simply iconic.
Oh dayum. That's epic. haha
Ba dum bump…PSSSSH!!! 😂 😂
Flattering poetry
Isn't it ironic?
Ba dum bump…PSSSSH!!! 😂 😂
(Keep them coming and I'll keep my snare drum out! lol!)
super cool. i love to see more of these.
Great approach to ionic thruster. I think you can get up the efficiency using Coanda Effect to improve the air pressure inside the "tube" near to 400% (3x). The same principle of bladeless fans. Cheers! 🥂
Beautiful! Especially at 9:07
Thanks for the plasma colored highlight at the end!
I'm glad you stuck around till the end Nigel! Yeah, going forward you'll always be getting your own plasma color / own space on the screen.
I imagine one area of improvement is enclosing the entire thruster in a tube to act like a ducted fan and reduce losses to viscosity between the surrounding slower air and the air in the thruster. Not sure about the other two but really cool content and an excellently made video. Seeing the improved results from staggered voltage stages reminds me of the varying airspeeds in a conventional turbofan compressor, I'd love to see the number of stages taken to the extreme. Looking forward to seeing the project develop!
(also I hope you have some patents in the work)
Maybe have inlets at each stage too, that way each stage can draw in more and more air as it gets accelerated.
I like the idea of considering turbofan concepts. One stage could help another stage gain air speed by forcing air through a compressed shapped enclosure.
This is an amazing build man, it's incredible!
Glad you made it happen, I was thinking of cascading the truster like that and it works!!! Congatulations!!
Oh and try ducting it too, consider aero dynamics as well.
That looks sick!! I was going to build a similar thruster a couple years ago but I would never have done such an Amazing job as you did, that's incredible work!
Bet you could build a go kart powered by this tech!
@@Flyer314 hell yeah!
A hold up. I was looking to talk to you in the past.
@@WarpedPerception is there A way to contact you?
If he would enclose it, in a tube, it would more than double the power due to the slip stream effect...
My first thought is that having it enclosed in a tube would increase your thrust, so long as you have enough primary air. You have too much secondary air, which I think may be slowing the air down and possibly could be introducing turbulence as the faster air hits the slower air.
I think also putting the engine into a Venturi shape will increase the velocity. All of this has the downside of adding weight, but the engine would need to be enclosed anyways to be used, right? This is just a guess though!
I was thinking this exact thought. Build it like a rocket engine with bell nozzle. And yes enclosed tube would help efficiency from escaping air.
@@rogerpha1398 it shouldn’t need a bell shaped nozzle (converging-diverging), just a converging nozzle, as I’m assuming he won’t be going supersonic!
Drawing in secondary air can be very beneficial. Look at high-bypass turbofan engines for airliners and heavy cargo aircraft. The engine itself is in a smaller cylinder in the middle. A second fan, attached at the first stage, pushes even more air along, around the outside. I believe they draw some air around the outside too, because of the airflow through the engine.
this, they don't put holes in the sides of jet engines for the same reason.
@@JWSmythe This design definietly faces ineficiencys due to the lack of enclosure. In this design, the moving air contacts the standing air and expands behind the first and second stages, thus is lost and not acelerated further. The whole jet engine thing is mainly due to efincey in regards to the combustion, as it is more economic to drive the bypas fan with the engine. I am not to sure if sucking in aditional air will improve the thrust and eficancy for the ion thruster. There is no expansion of air or moving parts like in a jet engine. The whole concept is drawing in air and acelerating it, more like a propeller than an engine. It is in concept comparable to mutiple ducted fans in a row.
I was wondering if that could be used as a fan as well. That would be a pretty cool fan.
Next, for this build have you thought of doing more stage. Like 4 and 5 and see what happens then.
This was an amazing build thank you for this great information. Can wait to see the next steps in your plane build.
It makes ozone, which is carcinogenic. I would not like to have an ionic thruster blow in my face for an extended period of time.
Yes please! Show us more! The way to go!
The thing is this engine might generate good stationary thrust, but when the thrusters starts moving and thus there is a different freestream velocity, I think the seperation between the stages might need to be dynamically changed to keep up the thrust levels.
edit: Also you do not know yet if it generates more or less thrust when moving trough the air, this might be very useful to test.
Irl application I'd say worm gears could take care of that. But that leaves the issue of debris in real world application. Magnetism on air bearings?
That could easily be addressed by mounting the green square parts on an array that allows the configuration to be adjusted with a button push.
A full sized ionic engine powering an air craft would probably benefit from being able to change the internal engine configuration, controlled in the same kind of manner as modern current jet engines can be reconfigured for reverse thrust, for example.
I would hazard a guess that this would be something incorporated in the 2nd prototype testing stage... proving the concept, as this 1st prototype does, would be the main concern of... er... well... prototype 1.
so, it could function as a windless generator
@@DeadbeatGamer
Ah, not half bad!
None of you have any idea what you're talking about so stop talking. Unless you're a qualified physicists.
I would try having each stage rotated 90 degrees, in case of 2 stages and 45 degrees in case of 3 stages, the idea is to not have each stage blocking the next one as much.
i would also test having the device inside a tube to see if its better or worse
I would just add 1 degree more on the simplistic scale of BS you mentioned earlier.
That way the turbines of the quantum maglev-electro effect would lift all things grandiose like the dark side of the Moon.
(everyone can talk shit my friend 😘)
@@jebclang9403 you are the only one talking shit
Multistage...good idea man. Im working on improving a single stage myself. Combining the two though...well... I guess we'll see.
9:03 has a real magic to it. Fair play with this experiment, it's really cool. Have you considered housing the creation inside a jet shaped casing, which focusses the air similar to how a conventional jet engine does? And have as many stages as you can, just keep adding and comparing the thrust as you go along. Keep the gap between them at about an inch or less.
Best of luck 😉
Thank you for clarifying in the brackets
1) Different voltages at different stages like a C.R.T tube to add to the velocity of the ions, having a constantly changing field
2) A rectified FULL-BRIDGE power supply with more voltage
3) Thinner anode and cathode, with many more wires and lighter construction
Also do we really want the positive to be the thin wire ? If the thin wire is negative it’s going to ionise air much easier since electrons can leave it faster.
Also-also, I think more stages will improve air speed and one should consider making the attractive plates slightly longer and with spikes at the end so the air is ionised with the opposite charge near the exit and attracted to the second stage. In fact, you can make everything from thin plates with many spikes at the end and ditch the thin wire altogether. Shorter plates for negative side and longer for the positive one. That way it will act almost like an ion accelerator. Of course, the width of the plates should be optimised depending on the intended airspeed. The faster the air moves the less of it (proportionally) gets ionised at any point.
Also, higher voltage and more distance means more ion acceleration with the same amount of materials.
The air also probably gets heated up a little at each stage so after enough stages the air blower might start behaving more like a jet engine with hot exhaust. Compared to a turbo jet this acts more like a 2-in-1 turbine and burner.
The construction might also help a cone design - wide radius side for air intake, short radius side with highest voltage for force.
Might even arrange the positive cathodes in a vortex shape to drive air better.
@@artursvancans9702 Positive cathodes? 🤣
I was thinking that distance between wires could be utilized like a tesla turbine utilizes distance - if there were many more wires of optimal spacing then you might be able to start taking advantage of potential Casmir cavities.
@@cezarcatalin1406 that's a good point, I meant thinner wires and many more would increase the effective surface area while hopefully making the thing lighter. You could make the anode thicker but I would go with two layers of super fine strands of wire. The idea is not to absorb the electron back to be out of the way and help accelerate the air. The thin wires can also be bunched into small groups of different shapes and configuration for experimentation
Is there a different way to wind the electrode coils so that they form a “lensing” pattern similar to a fresnel lens which would “focus” the stream of excited air towards the center of your array and possibly accelerate the air more?
I was thinking this. This prevents airflow though but accelerates the air coming out. So less air coming out faster.
Would any shielding or reflection boost efficiency?
That's where I'd think spiral plasma wires would come in handy. Instead of straight lines of plasma, create a vortex movement.
A spiderweb design would fit this criteria.
I also think this is the right direction, there must be lots of side loss of flow. rotating the mid stage by 90deg might help.
Many thanks for so many amazing videos with a number of technical information.
This was amazing… I had no idea of this kind of advancement and .. just wow
Experimenting with cowlings and compressive stages would also be interesting.
Venturi
I think that without a cowling, air from the sides will be dragged into the ionic stream and slow it down.
@@Tantalos1492 you WANT air to be dragged into the stream. the more the better. ions transferring their momentum to the surrounding air is what gets you thrust.
You should try adding a nozzle and building a sealing tube around the stages. I bet you’re loosing a lot of pressure out the sides that you could be directing rearward.
impressive work my good sir very inspiring.
Great build and as for inefficiencies this build I'm assuming would eventually be enclosed on the sides, definitely needs to be built with lighter material's including the copper rods, and I'm not really sure of a third one but I feel like it's obvious lol 😅but again I love the idea and good luck in your designs 😁
I recommend wrapping this in a magnetic field (solenoid) which will both accelerate the ions and serve as a feedback for free ions that don't lose charge at the outlet.
That way you have an electromagnetic jet engine that is completely solid state. Depending on the work you put in, it would make an interesting eVTOL or drone.
That's very close to a Magneto-Hydrodynamic engine.
I would not suggest doing that but instead wrapping it in foil or metal sheets. this keeps the fields tighter in the engine it self instead of going all over the outside.
The reason i would not use a magnet for that is the you want to create somewhat of a laminar flow of air through the tube but a magnetic field around it would either pull the electrons to it or push them away.
lets say it pushes them the they would al go to the center. this would increase plasma density but also decrease the surface at with the plasma contacts other air molecules to make the move along.
where the idea could work is a sort of an afterburner if you slowly decrease the tube area until you get a smaller tube where the plasma created is pushed down the tube with several solenoids like a small particle accelerator of sorts. that small tube could the go into a bell nozzle or aerospike to turn the pressure back into velocity. the only thing would be cooling the whole thing when in use and after
how can a magnetic field add kinetic energy to a particle's velocity if all it can due is apply force 90 degrees to its motion? For instance, in a cyclotron, the magnetic field just changes the direction of the electrons, it doesn't speed them up. The electric field speeds them up
@@pyropulseIXXI This is not pointed at me, but I read that as a misapplication of magnetic flux line shaping but using soft iron, similar to power supplies by Pavan Biliyar, which I don't believe electrostatic forces are affected by being that the iron is neutral. Again, I don't know much beyond highschool physics. Sorry if I misinterpreted what Pavan said.
i recommend you learn how electromagnetism works, because adding a magnetic field will add drag to the ions in the direction you want them to go and accelerate them in a direction you don't want them to go. you can do ionic thrust or mhdt, not both.
I can imagine future spaceships having that purple/blue glow behind them.
Future? There’s at least three probes currently out in the solar system cruising around on ion thrusters. They just have the same problem as regular rockets though; they have to take their reaction mass with them.
First spacecraft with ion thrusters were flown in 1970s. 50 years ago doesn't sound like "future spaceships" ;)
@@randombloke82 One day we might find a way to gather reaction mass along the way, or convert solar energy into mass (we can technically do this, it just requires a *lot* of energy), or maybe send mass-by-wire somehow
@@icyartillery9027 photoatoms?
@@Pharisaeus how does that work? Genuine question. This setup sounds like the traversing ions influence the surrounding air molecules helping create thrust, but there’s nothing in space. Does the movement of ions themselves create the thrust?
You had me with if you are Not a Shmuck! Priceless line!
Keep Moving Forward!..
Honestly the open design is probably lowering the efficiency quite a bit. The air pressure behind each stage is higher than in front which means it will be leaking out from behind each stage. Really excited to see the full ability of this new idea. I encourage you to experiment with harmonics and pulsed voltages because you may be able to find a resonant frequency of the ions traveling from the positive side to the negative side. My theory is to try finding the average time it takes for an ion to pass from one electrode to the other and match the pulse rate with that. Of course, I could try this at home myself... eh, probably best I don't. Very nice work here, thank you for the content.
Congratulations on the amazing build man! Those low-light pictures are absolutely gorgeous, and I'm impressed with how much air you could push with just high voltage charges. Maybe you could get together with PeterSripol to develop a low-speed ultralight model aircraft for this thing to power!
Tom stanton on youtube has already designed some great aircrafts designed to be very light and fly under very low thrust, I think that would be an amazing pairing.
The explosion video made me laugh hysterically 🤣🤣🤣
Nice project, well done!!
Brilliant, very good stuff. Its all about power to weight ratio... and I think you have a strong indication of what this means and where we are going with respect to hydro-carbon fuels...
The staggered thrust solution reminds me of how different turbine blade pitches throughout the stages. So each stage could accelerate airflow as it passes through.
Could be worth trying to run each stage on a different voltage - it might not improve thrust, but maybe it would decrease power consumption.
For turbine engines the compressor stage slows down air flow and increasing PSI. With a combination fan stage (2ndary/bypass) airflow which gives it thrust when adding all that with fire and fuel mixture.
Congrats, these are amazing results!
I've had some experience with corona discharge. My suggestions:
- Increase the "sharpness" of the anode by adding spikes to the wires.
- Enclose the thruster in a duct and maybe add a nozzle to increase air speed.
- Measure the current into the cathodes (with a high voltage probe). It should be ~0. When the dielectric breaks so does the field gradient, and ionization drops. Finding a combination of voltage, distance and electrode configuration to reduce cathode current should reduce the power consumption and improve efficiency.
Good luck!
Absolutely brilliant, I do think though you could direct the outlet into a narrower Venturi to increase thrust.
Congratulations! Great job!
Incredible work, looks really cool too. I wonder if the material of the frame affects efficiency. Acrylic has a pretty high dielectric constant, I’d be curious to see if using materials with a higher or lower dielectric constant would change things.
I assume that a lower dielectric constant would result in worse performance, since some of the current could go through the frame instead of the air
A high dielectric constant is fine, but acrylic is heavy if it's going to be used on a plane. Ionic thrusters have low thrust, so the frame needs to be as light as possible.
There is a solid-state wind generator that uses this effect backwards, to extract energy from wind. I'd love to see some experiments with that.
yes, plz.
I thought it used resonance vibrations
It's just piezoelectricity
A quartz crystal set to a harmonic resonant frequency of a vertical plank that as the wind blows it vibrates at a subsonic frequency and the vibration (sound) is turned directly into Alternating Current...
Unless you're talking about the ions in water vapor and rain drops? That's three layers basically like a diode/capacitor.. PTE film(plumbers tape) as a seperator. Aluminum foil as an anode top layer and I believe the cathode is copper underleath. I'm sure the cathode doesn't matter as much you could probably use aluminum foil and PET on both sides like a Uindhurst static motor and still get a current. The only problem with this is unless you have a laser cutter the individual cells would be a pain in the as to make individually if wanted to cover your roof with. Per square meter roughly the same power output as a solar panel during a rain storm. The energy I believe is triboelectric meaning it has to be managed in capacitor banks and conversion coils before being converted to a usable square wave AC. But totally doable. There's also triboelectric voltage difference potential from atmospheric v gradient. It requires a long thin wire suspended high in the air.
Pretty cool.
I'd like to see blade shaped negative poles.
Also, it would be interesting to see a venturi shaped tube shape. Basically, the forward and aft thrusters larger in the front and back of the venturi with a smaller diameter thruster in the middle.
Maybe offset the angle of the wires to the following thruster. Basically 33° between each. It might create angular flow through the venturi.
Awesome video! Thank for making it.
Directed thrust arrays. Also incredible how you have excited so many of us with this build. Cheers!
Not only is your project here cool, it's actually really beautifully made, same with the camera work, truly an artist!
amazing amazing, an entire new vista has been revealed to me, THANK YOU
Great video! Can’t wait to see where you go with this
Add a bellmouth inlet, cover the whole assembly with a tube, and add a converging nozzle may also increase thrust noticeably. Test and experimentally determine the optimal staggered spacing for each stage too, since the air is flowing faster after each stage.
I can't imagine a setup like this has much static pressure (I say this knowing not very much about ionic thrust) so a nozzle on the end may hurt performance instead
@@lizard_girl Yeah it might not do alot, but my understanding is that part of the additional thrust from converging nozzle cones comes simply from the higher velocity/lower pressure air inside creating a pressure difference to the air outside, and since the nozzle has an angled cone, you get a force pushing perpendicular to the nozzle angle, one component of which is along the axis of the thruster. Might not do much at all or hurt the overall performance as you suggested, but it seems simple enough to 3d print and try.
You should change pipes/cables to hexagonals and stack them like honeycomb, it will increase area of air acceleration.
Nice work!
This is actually a really worthwhile test. As cgp grey once said of the hexagon "maximum volume, minimum wall"
Ccp gray pls
@@gormauslander But that's not true, circle has better wall/field ratio.
@@gormauslander The Hexagon is Bestagon
@@milod.5267 You're confusing the ideal world of math with the real world. You cannot tile a surface with circles because they leave void space between them. Corners are required on a regular polygon to maximize efficient packing.
Gorgeous! This is Ironman hand reactor technology to flight!!😍 You are a genius!❤
Incredible video just happened upon your channel while browsing RUclips I'm definitely subscribing!
The whole concept and build is really cool but the most awesome part is when you turn out the lights and let us see the "generator" in operation! My first thought while looking at the ultraviolet blue lights was, "the man has brought to life the Star Trek Enterprise ~ with Dilithium Chrystals!" Great show, keep us informed of your progress.
For improvements
My thoughts on improvements:
1) on the Electric Field: further REDUCE the distance between the opposed charges and increase the voltage + use more wires for a more dense field if possible ;)
2) on the areodynamics: REDUCE the cross sectional area of the ground electrode or even change the shape of it (cylinder to symmetrical airfoil to)
3) SET UP: Instead of placing the 3 "Generators" in series, place them next to each other (in parallel)
Let me know what you think about :)
Also I am curious to see the improvements
Personally i appreciate your inputs.
In the future, don't be naive.
@@findmeiseeu some people dont know alot about hi volt electricity and fluid dynamics, so give David a bit of leeway....
What if you have guide vanes in every cross section for air to pull into each of the 3 plasma fields
I do not know if it makes any difference, but would it be possible to power up the circuit with pulses of power? Just wondering if it would make any difference on the thrust. I am pretty sure that it would reduce power consumption.
@@findmeiseeu parallel might work better in a converging duct.
Super build!
The improvement I would bring is placing the whole contraption in a tube, otherwise the flow of 1st thruster is going a bit in front and a lot in lateral, outside the build.
If you place it in a tube, it will add.
Success!
Hahah this is awesome mate studying in the plasma field myself. Loved your vid mate u got a subscriber. :)
you have used the same voltage on every stage of the thruster. What if you increase the voltage from stage to stage while reducing the distance of the electrodes?
I love all of the practical demonstrations of things like voltage through arcing lengths. Helps build an intuition of the energy being dealt with. Very effective 👍
This is incredible. I am so excited to see how this will impact the aviation industry.
Just wait for V2 of the thruster.
Current ion drives are much more efficient than powerful. They actually don’t work in atmosphere at the scales of real planes
@Plasma Channel is wind velocity relative to ionic thrust or is it just a coincidence that the wind velocity of 2.3 matches the ionic thrust reading of 23?
it won't affect it. the thing weighs a pound. the power supply weighs several pounds. his thrust to weight calculation didn't include the power supply. this is useless (but pretty).
@@Welcome2TheInternet To be fair, by the time this was approved by the FAA it’ll be 2050 lol
Bravo Jay
way to go
I’m truly blown away by your project and I’m so intrigued to see where your next build takes you next. Thank you for bringing us along in your experiment. I can’t wait to see where all of this goes for you…
Love this stuff. When your final version hits big, please continue to make these videos. I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for uploading!
That was gorgeous! More please.
Congratulations, nice work!
I love seeing this in action and in the dark! Over 10 years ago friends and I did some pod racer designs in art school for fun. Mine was claimed to use an ionic thruster over the traditional jet engine, because sci fi. This is so cool watching a thruster being tested and refined in real life. Excited to see the next video.
This is awesome it would be nice to see if a conic or narrowing style of the enclosed jet would drastically increase thrust (With Bernoulli's principle & more mesh at varying sizes throughout)
You got me thinking, and now I know how to build a unit that is 140% efficient. Thank you.
OMG !! such an innovation 👍👍🔥