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”.
Ion wind propulsion systems could be used to fly less noisy drones. Eventually ion propulsion could work with more conventional combustion systems to create more fuel-efficient, hybrid passenger planes and other large aircraft.
Nature – Flight of an aeroplane with solid-state propulsion
Ionic Wind 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.
Abstract – Flight of an aeroplane with solid-state propulsion
Since the first aeroplane flight more than 100 years ago, aeroplanes have been propelled using moving surfaces such as propellers and turbines. Most have been powered by fossil-fuel combustion. Electroaerodynamics, in which electrical forces accelerate ions in a fluid has been proposed as an alternative method of propelling aeroplanes—without moving parts, nearly silently and without combustion emissions. However, no aeroplane with such a solid-state propulsion system has yet flown. Here we demonstrate that a solid-state propulsion system can sustain powered flight, by designing and flying an electroaerodynamically propelled heavier-than-air aeroplane. We flew a fixed-wing aeroplane with a five-metre wingspan ten times and showed that it achieved steady-level flight. All batteries and power systems, including a specifically developed ultralight high-voltage (40-kilovolt) power converter, were carried on-board. We show that conventionally accepted limitations in thrust-to-power ratio and thrust density which were previously thought to make electroaerodynamics unfeasible as a method of aeroplane propulsion, are surmountable. We provide a proof of concept for electroaerodynamic aeroplane propulsion, opening up possibilities for aircraft and aerodynamic devices that are quieter, mechanically simpler and do not emit combustion emissions.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Please google US Patent No. 10,119,527 to see flight footage of an ion propelled aircraft that predates the MIT glider shaped device. The previous and verified invention is also vastly more efficient and powerful for its weight. It would scale up as much as anyone would like.
Better for a rigid rectenna airship–with parts punching through for ion wind generation. Beam power down/up to the airship–then out the back for psuedo-sats
All electric
This is what Jacques Fresco worked on years ago.
I believe that this is what Jacques Fresco referred to in his Venus Project lectures.
Looks like The Simpsons does it again.
This really would be great if it can be made to work for drones, considering how loud they can be. It’s hard to imagine it scaling up to any practical level beyond that though.
This is old stuff. I read about this kind of stuff four decades ago.
I’ve got a hunch you’re right about that.
They have lasers for that. It burns the wings right off the little suckers. I don’t know if it available commercially yet. It uses a low power, eye safe, laser. It takes remarkably little power to burn the wings off a mosquito.
How would the ion drift velocity scale with altitude?
I’m going to guess that at very high altitudes with much lower air pressure the ion drift velocity is going to be a lot higher. It might scale with inverse air pressure or something.
As I said, it’s easy to fly small models. Sometimes a concept scales up by a factor of a thousand or more, sometimes (as with flapping wings) it doesn’t. This was a worthwhile exercise, and it should give them enough data that they could estimate the performance of a real airplane from it. I just think it’s premature to talk, as the article does, of applications to large aircraft.
Looks like it can fly far enough to get me to my car from the porch.
It’s a proof of concept. The first car was not a Mclaren P1, the first rocket was not a Saturn V, nor was the first computer a wafer-thin laptop with a Core i5 CPU. We advance by dreaming, not by dismissing every idea becasue we can’t perfect it with the first attempt.
I’m pleased to see more research into fossil fuel alternatives and am particularly excited to see a working test of electrohydrodynamic thrust (especially after utilizing the technology in one of my books). We need this. The potential ozone is still far less polluting than the damage caused by fossil fuels and much easier to address. No technology is consumer practical when it first emerges, but not exploring it means stagnation. Imagine if those early computer designers scrapped their ideas because all they could accomplish is a few flashing lights with a machine the size of a house.
⊕1, but whenever I hear “40,000 volts” in the context of efficient, my mind kind of balks. Of course the volts are needed (and especially thin wires) to effect free-air ionization. Stripping electrons from O₂ and N₂ molecules, rendering them positively charged.
As with all circuits, where there’s a + pole, there’s also a — pole. Conveniently, the just-produced + ions are both repulsed from the + electrode (in all direction) and attracted toward the — electrode across the intervening electric field.
Being that there are a LOT of molecules of O₂, N₂ and Ar (and H₂O, CO₂… etc.) even for only a few centimeters of interelectrode gap, the ions really can’t pick up much kinetic energy afore hitting neutral species. Giving them a kick in the same general direction. Thing is, that that kick only serves to keep the + ions “in the channel” longer; we can think of it as “increasing the charge in the channel”.
Because… “thinking like a physicist”, one quickly realizes that it is the electric field attraction/repulsion of the ionizing (and negative attracting) ELECTRODES to the ions in the gap, that gives those same wires a net thrust force. Even if the ions in between were naught to move at all, it is not their acceleration that delivers the aircraft forward propulsive force. It is their presence, and in turn, their ionic charge density.
Which leads me to conclude: were it possible to produce the 40–60 thousand volts at really high efficiency, then it is possible that the propulsive force efficiency could be fairly high. The limit of course would be “at what ionic drift velocity”.
For when the aircraft itself has a velocity appreciably equal-or-higher than the ion drift velocity, then the ionization work function combined with reduced channel net-charge works against efficiency.
Strongly.
Very strongly.
I’ve got no hard numbers…
But I do recall a physics article some 45 or so years back (Scientific American) positing this very kind of ionic propulsion as being potentially utile… with the ion-drift velocity measured in double-digits centimeters-per-second. In spite of all the neutral atoms and molecules between, at ordinary atmospheric pressure.
Lastly, we should remember that Dyson and others have made a tidy shiny penny selling no-moving-parts ionic breeze machines for household use. Same idea. Ionization+electric field attraction. Wind.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
⊕1 for being well mannered… AND being right, to boot. GoatGuy
They strongly imply that the thrust/unit power is more efficient. But the observed performance relative to off-the-shelf electric model planes says otherwise.
I think the theoretical limits are higher than existing methods, so with development…
The Wright brothers developed their aerodynamics using a wind tunnel.
They didn’t just strap a couple of doors to a bicycle and get lucky.
Similar systems running in reverse have been trialed for solid state wind generators: using air movement to generate electric current instead of the other way round.
Look up “ionocraft” or “lifters” and you’ll see this sort of thing has been done before
Their video mentions drones. That would make sense. A silent drone could be useful for police and military work.
OK, let me rephrase what I said. This report gives no evidence that the system is, or can be, efficient enough to give an airliner a useful range. If it isn’t, then being silent with no moving parts is irrelevant.
It’s silent and has no moving part…if you don’t see any benefit from that…go back to school, it failed you.
I’m going to take a wild guess and say that this doesn’t fly any better than a glider without the additional weight of this system.
I don’t see any evidence that this is more efficient than an electric motor driving a propeller.
Also, the square-cube law makes it very easy to fly small models. Flapping-wing models of that size are common, but I don’t expect to see a flapping-wing airliner any time soon.
So is the thrust per unit power competitive with existing aircraft engines?
Do all these ionized air molecules react to form ozone or nitrogen oxides? We wouldn’t want something that is more polluting than the current sort of engine.
If it works & the lithium-air battery works the two technologies will complement each other nicely.
Really? Science is the method….THAT’S what it is. The wright brothers experimented with different methods models etc before they came up with it.
Using your words the entire history of science back to its first “inventor” so to speak is rendered as “nothing special”.
God this is where the Modern University system has left us.
Hope they get additional funding, and can scale it up much more.
This would be better suited for station keeping on things like high altitude balloons and very light drones.
This plane has some actual science behind, Wright brothers were just some bicycles manufacturers who just happen to be the first among many others at the time, nothing special
Nice toy with (hopefully) good potential. Don’t compare it to the Wright brothers’ plane though. Theirs carried a human pilot, this one was a large model. Model aircraft were around hundreds of years before Kittyhawk.
If you can accelerate you can also deaccelerate. Can you use this method to generating energy when descent?
Or even compress air mass in front of a potential spaceship to a shield upon re-entry into the atmosphere.
Solid state flying mosquito killer!
This is old stuff. I read about this kind of stuff four decades ago.
I’ve got a hunch you’re right about that.
They have lasers for that. It burns the wings right off the little suckers. I don’t know if it available commercially yet. It uses a low power, eye safe, laser. It takes remarkably little power to burn the wings off a mosquito.
How would the ion drift velocity scale with altitude?
I’m going to guess that at very high altitudes with much lower air pressure the ion drift velocity is going to be a lot higher. It might scale with inverse air pressure or something.
As I said, it’s easy to fly small models. Sometimes a concept scales up by a factor of a thousand or more, sometimes (as with flapping wings) it doesn’t. This was a worthwhile exercise, and it should give them enough data that they could estimate the performance of a real airplane from it. I just think it’s premature to talk, as the article does, of applications to large aircraft.
Looks like it can fly far enough to get me to my car from the porch.
It’s a proof of concept. The first car was not a Mclaren P1, the first rocket was not a Saturn V, nor was the first computer a wafer-thin laptop with a Core i5 CPU. We advance by dreaming, not by dismissing every idea becasue we can’t perfect it with the first attempt.
I’m pleased to see more research into fossil fuel alternatives and am particularly excited to see a working test of electrohydrodynamic thrust (especially after utilizing the technology in one of my books). We need this. The potential ozone is still far less polluting than the damage caused by fossil fuels and much easier to address. No technology is consumer practical when it first emerges, but not exploring it means stagnation. Imagine if those early computer designers scrapped their ideas because all they could accomplish is a few flashing lights with a machine the size of a house.
⊕1, but whenever I hear “40,000 volts” in the context of efficient, my mind kind of balks. Of course the volts are needed (and especially thin wires) to effect free-air ionization. Stripping electrons from O₂ and N₂ molecules, rendering them positively charged.
As with all circuits, where there’s a + pole, there’s also a — pole. Conveniently, the just-produced + ions are both repulsed from the + electrode (in all direction) and attracted toward the — electrode across the intervening electric field.
Being that there are a LOT of molecules of O₂, N₂ and Ar (and H₂O, CO₂… etc.) even for only a few centimeters of interelectrode gap, the ions really can’t pick up much kinetic energy afore hitting neutral species. Giving them a kick in the same general direction. Thing is, that that kick only serves to keep the + ions “in the channel” longer; we can think of it as “increasing the charge in the channel”.
Because… “thinking like a physicist”, one quickly realizes that it is the electric field attraction/repulsion of the ionizing (and negative attracting) ELECTRODES to the ions in the gap, that gives those same wires a net thrust force. Even if the ions in between were naught to move at all, it is not their acceleration that delivers the aircraft forward propulsive force. It is their presence, and in turn, their ionic charge density.
Which leads me to conclude: were it possible to produce the 40–60 thousand volts at really high efficiency, then it is possible that the propulsive force efficiency could be fairly high. The limit of course would be “at what ionic drift velocity”.
For when the aircraft itself has a velocity appreciably equal-or-higher than the ion drift velocity, then the ionization work function combined with reduced channel net-charge works against efficiency.
Strongly.
Very strongly.
I’ve got no hard numbers…
But I do recall a physics article some 45 or so years back (Scientific American) positing this very kind of ionic propulsion as being potentially utile… with the ion-drift velocity measured in double-digits centimeters-per-second. In spite of all the neutral atoms and molecules between, at ordinary atmospheric pressure.
Lastly, we should remember that Dyson and others have made a tidy shiny penny selling no-moving-parts ionic breeze machines for household use. Same idea. Ionization+electric field attraction. Wind.
Just saying,
GoatGuy
⊕1 for being well mannered… AND being right, to boot. GoatGuy
They strongly imply that the thrust/unit power is more efficient. But the observed performance relative to off-the-shelf electric model planes says otherwise.
I think the theoretical limits are higher than existing methods, so with development…
The Wright brothers developed their aerodynamics using a wind tunnel.
They didn’t just strap a couple of doors to a bicycle and get lucky.
Similar systems running in reverse have been trialed for solid state wind generators: using air movement to generate electric current instead of the other way round.
Look up “ionocraft” or “lifters” and you’ll see this sort of thing has been done before
Their video mentions drones. That would make sense. A silent drone could be useful for police and military work.
OK, let me rephrase what I said. This report gives no evidence that the system is, or can be, efficient enough to give an airliner a useful range. If it isn’t, then being silent with no moving parts is irrelevant.
It’s silent and has no moving part…if you don’t see any benefit from that…go back to school, it failed you.
I’m going to take a wild guess and say that this doesn’t fly any better than a glider without the additional weight of this system.
I don’t see any evidence that this is more efficient than an electric motor driving a propeller.
Also, the square-cube law makes it very easy to fly small models. Flapping-wing models of that size are common, but I don’t expect to see a flapping-wing airliner any time soon.
So is the thrust per unit power competitive with existing aircraft engines?
Do all these ionized air molecules react to form ozone or nitrogen oxides? We wouldn’t want something that is more polluting than the current sort of engine.
If it works & the lithium-air battery works the two technologies will complement each other nicely.
Really? Science is the method….THAT’S what it is. The wright brothers experimented with different methods models etc before they came up with it.
Using your words the entire history of science back to its first “inventor” so to speak is rendered as “nothing special”.
God this is where the Modern University system has left us.
Hope they get additional funding, and can scale it up much more.
This would be better suited for station keeping on things like high altitude balloons and very light drones.
This plane has some actual science behind, Wright brothers were just some bicycles manufacturers who just happen to be the first among many others at the time, nothing special
Nice toy with (hopefully) good potential. Don’t compare it to the Wright brothers’ plane though. Theirs carried a human pilot, this one was a large model. Model aircraft were around hundreds of years before Kittyhawk.
If you can accelerate you can also deaccelerate. Can you use this method to generating energy when descent?
Or even compress air mass in front of a potential spaceship to a shield upon re-entry into the atmosphere.
Solid state flying mosquito killer!