It's a wing. It's a paddle wheel. It's FanWing!

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West
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Joined: 07 Jan 2004, 00:42
Location: San Diego, CA
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pretty cool idea
Bring back wider rear wings, V10s, and tobacco advertisements

manchild
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Joined: 03 Jun 2005, 10:54

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I've read an article about that fan wing some 5 years ago

RH1300S
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Joined: 06 Jun 2005, 15:29

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I just cannot visualise how it works, no point pretending I can either......can anyone enlighten me?

manchild
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Joined: 03 Jun 2005, 10:54

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RH1300S wrote:I just cannot visualise how it works, no point pretending I can either......can anyone enlighten me?
http://www.fanwing.com/desc.htm
How does it work? The aircraft has a cross-flow fan along the leading edge of each wing. The fan pulls the air in at the front and accelerates it over the trailing edge of the wing. By transferring the work of the engine to the rotor, which spans the whole wing, the FanWing accelerates a large volume of air and achieves a high lift-efficiency.
Image

:wink:

RH1300S
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Joined: 06 Jun 2005, 15:29

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Aaaahh.....I was assuming that the fan was provide forward motion too. I guess not!

So, this thing needs little or no forward motion to generate lift?

I bet you can do some weird stuff with manoeuvers :twisted:

DaveKillens
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Joined: 20 Jan 2005, 04:02

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nice concept, but I wouldn't want to be in one if it has a bird strike.

WhiteBoy
WhiteBoy
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This wing produces significant lift at low speed. It enables the aircraft to takeoff at very low speed and to fly almost stationary (or stationary is a good headwind :)). Anyway, it also produces a herendous amount of drag so it's definately not a high speed application. It's a very simple mechanism with just a piston engine on the current prototypes running the fan and the fan acts as the propulsion device as well as helping to produce lift.
Basically the thing will probably replce helicopters for a lot of applications because it's very simple mehanically (unlike copters) and can fly very slowly. It'll also be a great aggricultural sprayer plane as you can dump the spray into the turbine and out it flies! Anyway, it'll never get a racing car - too much drag.
WhiteBoy

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Spencifer_Murphy
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Joined: 11 Apr 2004, 23:29
Location: London, England, UK

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Its a very clever concept...but you gotta admit...it is astondingly ugly!
Silence is golden when you don't know a good answer.

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Steven
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Joined: 19 Aug 2002, 18:32
Location: Belgium
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important for airplanes is the reliability, and I wonder what happens if the engine fails. When some sprayer plane gets engine troubles if can be put to the ground quickly, it may be a rough landing but you'll make it if you're not flying too high.
However, with this high draw wing, engine trouble may immediately drop your plane's speed... and what then? Does that wing generate enough lift to not let if fall down like a rock from the sky? :idea:


RH1300S
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Joined: 06 Jun 2005, 15:29

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Tomba wrote:important for airplanes is the reliability, and I wonder what happens if the engine fails. When some sprayer plane gets engine troubles if can be put to the ground quickly, it may be a rough landing but you'll make it if you're not flying too high.
However, with this high draw wing, engine trouble may immediately drop your plane's speed... and what then? Does that wing generate enough lift to not let if fall down like a rock from the sky? :idea:
There are plenty of conventional planes that would drop out of the sky with engine failure and many have one engine. If they want this thing to get airborne (so to speak :D) then they will find a way to manage the risk.

Alexis
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Joined: 11 Nov 2005, 20:24
Location: Belgium --Peizegem--

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Very cool concept. 5kms from where i live (on the beautiful flemish countryside with absolutely no motorsport fans :? ) there's a little airfield for RC planes and RC dirt buggies. There was a guy who had one of those things, custom made I think. He came testing it a lot but even after three months it still didn't work. Immediatly after take-off it turned and crashed into the ground. I think it's just to unstable to fly and to make turns because if u want it to turn the fan of one wing has to rotate faster than the fan of the other wing. To do that he needed some complex differential sort of thing and he couldn't afford it. Those on the movies seem to work a little different though but they still seem very unstable.

He stopped his project and instead he made a beer bottle container fly (srr don't know the engish translation for the flemish "bak bier" or "bierkrat" :lol: )
Show that you're a loser with a lot of money who can't get a racing license, drive the Gumball 3000...

Surry fer mai bed Hinglish

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Could this idea be used in F1. Wings on F1 cars are so inefficient, just when you need maximum downforce ie. in the corners the car is going at its slowest speed therefore minimum downforce. This fan wing would be great for generating high downforce even while the car was slowing down. The question is though would it be practical, how big wud the fan need to be to give any sort of significant advantage.

RH1300S
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Joined: 06 Jun 2005, 15:29

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On one level the answer is simple - the rules say no movable aerodynamic devices. So, it's illegal.

On the other hand it must be able to produce more negative lift at lower car velocity, but it looks as if it would be mega draggy at high speed.

With movable devices allowed, I suspect that Jim Hall & Gordon Murray had the right idea with their fan cars evacuating air from the underbody. Much more elegeant 8)

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