Designing A Self Propelling Ionic Thrust Wing

Hey all! Thanks for watching, and to Curiosity Stream for supporting this video. Update: Turns out thrust is much lower than 44 grams. Chat GPT was fairly accurate - but my rusty ability to convert Newtons to grams of force definitely slipped. I'll update this comment when i test it physically. Check out Joel's ionic thrusters here: youtube.com/@integza My last BSI thruster here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yftKjkZHirc Peter Sripol's channel here: www.youtube.com/channel/UC7yF9tV4xWEMZkel7q8La_w

You should have an alliance with the tomato, Joel's main enemy

Man! this is beautiful... Let's see if Joel can one up you now! And to answer your last question... probably NO! Sorry, but I don't see this being an efficient way to fly! Issue is to get very high airflow I expect there to be exponentially high electrical waste. Doesn't mean these efforts are useless. not only the science coming out of these experiments could lead to new breakthroughs, but also, this would already make a great space heater that kills 99.9% of the airborne germs too!! 😁

An american measuring in milimeters is the most logical thing I've seen

imagine 50 years or shorter from now to think this could be the future of aviation is actually really exciting. i hope to see more designs and watch how far this progresses. your doing amazing work keep it up and we all might see a change in a massive way.

WEIGHT REDUCTION IDEAS: My dad and I used to build model airplanes you should like into using balsa wood and wax paper for the skin. Also replace those metal bolts with nylon bolts if you can! Finally 3d prints are a lot stronger thann your design is giving them credit for! Make your parts thickness .4 or .6 mm! Use 2 or 3 layers of walls. If your part has enough room for support material you can definitely reduce weight. Good luck!! If you want some help reach out!

Seeing air suddenly start moving so fast with no noise from a fan or anything is so cool!

it might be a good idea to mount the ionic thruster layers inside the wing and use the air that has been accelerated to replace the boundary flow layer with each stage. That way you could reduce drag by ensuring laminar flow and not having a large structure sticking up out of the wing. That would reduce the amount of thrust you need to generate in order to make something fly.

I love seeing creators collab. This is the meaning of humanity: Combining our individual ideas and specialties to accomplish our awesome and lofty goals.

Just a thought, but you could use a foaming PLA to further reduce weight. Love the progress so far and can't wait for the next video!

Amazing how half of Peter's face is more interesting then both of us combined P.S:This is war now my friend!!!

This is the first channel I've subscribed to because I wanted to stay updated on what they were working on. Really the video and the sponsor is write up my alley. Looking forward to seeing more!

In my heart I hope to see some amazing and big things from you with this, it's such a amazing thing to watch as you improve on it every iteration.

Hi, Jay! Great challenge, great work! 🙂 Three suggestions for this project. First: You can place the wires lifted over the wing, but the surface of the HED thruster can be just an aluminum sheet glued to the surface of the wing itself. This can reduce drag, reduce weight and (possibly!) improve the laminar flow over the wing, which largely reduces skin drag. Consider electrodeposition of copper instead of aluminum sheets... would be even lighter and far less disruptive of airflow. Also consider placing wires on the trailing edge of an airfoil in order to avoid creating vortices (you are doing that already, in a sense). Second: You are thinking of a traditional "tube and wing" glider-like design, which is great, but a more modern solution would be a blended wing body (BWB). Since you are dealing with low speed flights, active stabilization should be far simpler than in the transonic speeds we see in military BWB aircraft, if needed at all. That will give you far more lift and thus far greater flight autonomy. Also, the batteries and HV generators would be sitting on a surface of the plane that generates lift, giving you far less need for structural strength in your wings, translating into a bit less weight overal (and every 10 grams count in your case...). Remember: gliders carry no heavy equipment and that is why their extra long wings can be so light - they need little reinforcement for structural integrity. Third: You are entering the wonderful realm of active flow control, which is an area that has seen a lot of research lately. Consider using a few of those thrusters under the area near the tips of the wings also and making that area a little "fat" at the trailing edge, so that the Coanda effect will give you "up" and "down" control authority on the wings (as you change the ratio of flow between the upper trhuster and the lower thruster) and you will not have to use (in this case, heavy) servos and control surfaces for controlling youraircraft. In your case, the idea is substituting ailerons for the differential in force between two thrusters, one over the wing and descending because of the Coanda effect, and the other under the wing and ascending for the same reason. Hope it helps. 😉 PS: Dear Integza (Joel), feel invited! 🤣

The easiest way to drop mass is to buy foaming agent infused PLA. You can adjust the amount of bubbles by changing nozzle temp (take care that it affects effective volumetric flow coming out of nozzle) Printing model airplanes is one of the main reason why that filament exists. Also redesigning your part to be printable in vase mode is also pretty important.

I doubt you'll ever get this to scale up to carry actual people into the air but I wish you all the best in your endevours. Somebody really needs to be doing this stuff and I'm grateful you've got it covered.

Very cool indeed!

The thing that I like the most about these videos is how you highlight the trail and error process. Not simply just showing a completed working project. It emphasizes the importance of building good habits and consistently improving/building upon the prior iterations.

the ionic wind generated by the previous electrode is being obstructed by the electrode next to it, the improved version sorts the problem a bit but still the obstruction happens. so instead of using multiple modules right next to each other, you can use two long modules throughout a vast area of the wing. i hope that may improve the weight to thrust ratio.

Its great you guys are competing in a friendly manner in order to progress these science and engineering projects. Love it. Cudos to you guys across the pond.