Solid-state, ion-drive airplane silently flies with no fuel or moving parts

https://newatlas.com/mit-ion-flight-...ircraft/57326/

Solid-state, ion-drive airplane silently flies with no fuel or moving
parts

AIRCRAFT

David Szondy

November 21st, 2018
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A new MIT plane is propelled via ionic wind(Credit: MIT)

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A team of MIT engineers has flown what was long thought impossible – a
heavier than air craft that needs no moving parts for achieving
powered lift. The 5-lb (2.3-kg) prototype with a 16-ft (5-m) wingspan
doesn't use propellers, turbines, or fans, but instead relied on a
silent stream of ionized air to maintain steady flight on an indoor
course of over 197 ft (60 m) at MIT's duPont Athletic Center.

The principle behind the MIT team's 10 recent test flights is called
"electroaerodynamics" and uses an ionic wind to create thrust. The
idea isn't new. The effect was first observed in the 1920s, and thanks
to the work of Major Alexander de Seversky and others, it has gained a
niche following in aeronautical and hobbyist circles.

The basic idea is to build a grid consisting of a series of wires or
lengths of foil, with one set acting as a positive electrode and the
other as a negative electrode. When charged, the positive electrode
strips the electrons away from surrounding air molecules, which are
then attracted to the negative electrode, and as they rush along, they
collide with neutral molecules and push them. This creates a tiny, but
measurable thrust.

Until now, the problem has been that electroaerodynamics has been
little more than a lab bench toy with its practical applications
limited to things like electronic air purifiers. This is because the
technology doesn't scale very well. The amount of thrust can be
increased by making the craft bigger, but doubling the size only
increases the grid's surface area by its square, while the craft's
volume, and hence its weight, increases by its cube.


The result is the tiny flying machine quickly becomes too heavy to
lift itself, which is why most such machines have been tiny gossamer
things dependent on outside power tethers to barely hover – a far cry
from de Seversky's dream of passenger-carrying ioncraft silently
whisking commuters to and fro.

According to MIT, the breakthrough came as a result of Steven Barrett,
associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, being
inspired by the silent fictional shuttlecraft of Star Trek. Taking
this as his starting point, Barrett and his team worked for nine years
on an ion propulsion system that needs no moving parts.

They managed this by making a glider-like drone with an airfoil made
up of thin wires toward the leading edge and thicker wires aft,
looking like a radio antenna from the early 20th century. These act as
the electrodes to move the air molecules and provide forward thrust.
Meanwhile, inside the fuselage is a bank of lithium-polymer batteries
and an electrical system devised by Professor David Perreault's Power
Electronics Research Group in the Research Laboratory of Electronics
to supply 40,000 volts to the electrodes. It's bit primitive, but it
does fly instead of merely hover or glide.

"This was the simplest possible plane we could design that could prove
the concept that an ion plane could fly," Barrett says. "It's still
some way away from an aircraft that could perform a useful mission. It
needs to be more efficient, fly for longer, and fly outside."

According to Barrett, the new ion flyer has a lot of potential
applications, from silent, non-polluting drones to supplemental
propulsion for more conventional aircraft. To this end, the team is
now working on improving the efficiency of the design, increasing the
electrode array's surface without adding too much weight, and devising
new flight control mechanisms.

"It took a long time to get here," says Barrett. "Going from the basic
principle to something that actually flies was a long journey of
characterizing the physics, then coming up with the design and making
it work. Now the possibilities for this kind of propulsion system are
viable."

The video below discusses the first ion wind flight, and the research
was published in Nature.

Source: MIT

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/boB6qu5dcCw