Designing A Next-Gen Ionic Thruster! (For Flight)

What an incredible build! I'm blown away (at 2.3 m/sec)

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.

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 :)

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.

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.

This is awesome! Great video

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

Definitely want to see more on the ionic thrusters. Great work!. This is an amazing build man, it's incredible!.

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.

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 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.

Thank you ... The idea of lining up the thrusters genius ... I've been trying to amp up my thruster

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 :)

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 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

Definitely want to see more on the ionic thrusters. Great work!

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!

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.

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.

That's what I call inspiring, qualitative video. I just subscribed because I'm feeling I will like your videos !