The silent, lightweight aircraft doesn’t depend on fossil fuels or batteries
Since the first airplane took flight over 100 years ago, virtually every aircraft in the sky has flown with the help of moving parts such as propellers, turbine blades, and fans, which are powered by the combustion of fossil fuels or by battery packs that produce a persistent, whining buzz.
Now MIT engineers have built and flown the first-ever plane with no moving parts. Instead of propellers or turbines, the light aircraft is powered by an “ionic wind” — a silent but mighty flow of ions that is produced aboard the plane, and that generates enough thrust to propel the plane over a sustained, steady flight.
Unlike turbine-powered planes, the aircraft does not depend on fossil fuels to fly. And unlike propeller-driven drones, the new design is completely silent.
“This is the first-ever sustained flight of a plane with no moving parts in the propulsion system,” says Steven Barrett, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. “This has potentially opened new and unexplored possibilities for aircraft which are quieter, mechanically simpler, and do not emit combustion emissions.”
He expects that in the near-term, such ion wind propulsion systems could be used to fly less noisy drones. Further out, he envisions ion propulsion paired with more conventional combustion systems to create more fuel-efficient, hybrid passenger planes and other large aircraft.
Barrett and his team at MIT have published their results today in the journal Nature.
Hobby crafts
Barrett says the inspiration for the team’s ion plane comes partly from the movie and television series, “Star Trek,” which he watched avidly as a kid. He was particularly drawn to the futuristic shuttlecrafts that effortlessly skimmed through the air, with seemingly no moving parts and hardly any noise or exhaust.
“This made me think, in the long-term future, planes shouldn’t have propellers and turbines,” Barrett says. “They should be more like the shuttles in ‘Star Trek,’ that have just a blue glow and silently glide.”
About nine years ago, Barrett started looking for ways to design a propulsion system for planes with no moving parts. He eventually came upon “ionic wind,” also known as electroaerodynamic thrust — a physical principle that was first identified in the 1920s and describes a wind, or thrust, that can be produced when a current is passed between a thin and a thick electrode. If enough voltage is applied, the air in between the electrodes can produce enough thrust to propel a small aircraft.
For years, electroaerodynamic thrust has mostly been a hobbyist’s project, and designs have for the most part been limited to small, desktop “lifters” tethered to large voltage supplies that create just enough wind for a small craft to hover briefly in the air. It was largely assumed that it would be impossible to produce enough ionic wind to propel a larger aircraft over a sustained flight.
“It was a sleepless night in a hotel when I was jet-lagged, and I was thinking about this and started searching for ways it could be done,” he recalls. “I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and found that, yes, it might become a viable propulsion system,” Barrett says. “And it turned out it needed many years of work to get from that to a first test flight.”
The team’s final design resembles a large, lightweight glider. The aircraft, which weighs about 5 pounds and has a 5-meter wingspan, carries an array of thin wires, which are strung like horizontal fencing along and beneath the front end of the plane’s wing. The wires act as positively charged electrodes, while similarly arranged thicker wires, running along the back end of the plane’s wing, serve as negative electrodes.
The fuselage of the plane holds a stack of lithium-polymer batteries. Barrett’s ion plane team included members of Professor David Perreault’s Power Electronics Research Group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics, who designed a power supply that would convert the batteries’ output to a sufficiently high voltage to propel the plane. In this way, the batteries supply electricity at 40,000 volts to positively charge the wires via a lightweight power converter.
Once the wires are energized, they act to attract and strip away negatively charged electrons from the surrounding air molecules, like a giant magnet attracting iron filings. The air molecules that are left behind are newly ionized, and are in turn attracted to the negatively charged electrodes at the back of the plane.
As the newly formed cloud of ions flows toward the negatively charged wires, each ion collides millions of times with other air molecules, creating a thrust that propels the aircraft forward.
Learn more: MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts
The Latest on: Ionic wind
[google_news title=”” keyword=”ionic wind” num_posts=”10″ blurb_length=”0″ show_thumb=”left”]
via Google News
The Latest on: Ionic wind
- US markets mixed as Fed opts to hold rates steadyon May 1, 2024 at 2:49 pm
US equities traded mixed for most of the session after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell commented that the next move is unlikely to be a hike, easing investor concerns that the Fed was losing ...
- Amazon results much better than expectedon April 30, 2024 at 3:05 pm
Business media got all excited about the quarterly results from Amazon, which were much better than expected. However, the outlook was weaker than expected for another quarter.
- The 30 best Walmart deals to shop this week — save up to 80% on Mother's Day gifts, gardening supplies and moreon April 26, 2024 at 2:23 pm
Some major deals on board: a Dyson stick vac for just $300, an HP laptop for $240 off and a powerful tower fan at a nearly 40%-plus markdown.
- Rare Earths Reserves: Top 8 Countries (Updated 2024)on April 24, 2024 at 1:55 pm
Rare earths prices soared to their highest level in 20 months, according to OilPrice.com, in early Q3 2023 coinciding with a temporary production halt in Myanmar, which accounted for 38 percent of ...
- The 30 best Walmart deals to shop this week — save up to 80% on outdoor gear, gardening supplies, tech and moreon April 24, 2024 at 10:39 am
Some major deals on board: a Mother's Day-ready digital picture frame for $30 off, a cordless 6-in-1 stick vac for just $80, and a Chromebook laptop for under $150.
- 29 Mother's Day Gifts for 2024on April 24, 2024 at 6:47 am
Comfy slippers, tasty treats, and other sure-to-please ideasBy Mary Beth QuirkIf there’s anything moms need at any given time, it’s most likely a break. A quiet moment with a latte, a good show ...
- Ionic Rare Earths Limited: Raises $5.5 Million in a Placementon April 23, 2024 at 8:16 pm
The Board of Ionic Rare Earths Ltd. announces it has received firm commitments to raise $5.5 million by way of a share placement of approximately 423 million shares at $0.013 per share . The Placement ...
- Charging ahead: The quest for clean energy and safer battery storageon April 22, 2024 at 10:31 am
Climate change is driving the transition toward clean energy and storage. Lithium-ion battery technology, while promising, suffers from some issues. Developers are working on solutions and ...
- Si6 to light up “Lithium Valley” with new Brazil drill blitzon April 18, 2024 at 1:04 am
Si6 Metals has detailed plans to kick off its third drilling program in Brazil’s renowned “Lithium Valley”, with 20 auger holes to be plunged as the company homes in on lithium and rare earths soil ...
via Bing News