Power-Consumption and Efficiency
Does
this device use more power than comparable Lifters? The
enhancer itself is somewhat detrimental in this case because
its mounted vertically and hence requires energy to lift,
rather than being a completely passive element like it might
be on an aircraft? Nonetheless, taking into account the
weight and size of the Lifter-Craft prototypes that have
been tested, it appears that the enhancer can offer a glimpse
of increased efficiency through passive future engineering
improvements in Lifter technology.
Plenum-Effect Smooths Landings
The
bottom of the foil-covered Bernoulli-Effect enhancer creates
a cavity at the bottom of the Lifter where air gets trapped
and compressed. This allows the Lifter to land more softly
than the conventional design, because this plenum-effect
is somewhat similar to how a parachute might slow down a
person falling through the air.
How can the Bernoulli Effect create thrust?
The
Bernoulli-Effect creates thrust by smoothing out vortexes
in the airflow near the Lifter. Therefore, instead of putting
more power into creating more thrust, the Bernoulli-Effect
might allow us to increase the efficiency of the power that
we are already putting into creating thrust.
A
Bernoulli-Effect enhancer is a passive means of increasing
the efficiency of the Lifter, because it confines the resulting
airflow to a high-velocity channel without actively requiring
input power. Thus, the passive nature of this type of thrust-enhancer
is beneficial to aircraft because it doesn't require extra-power
to operate.
Unlike an aircraft, the Lifter technology is Vertical-Take-Off
and Landing, or VTOL, which means that the thrust enhancers
energy-consumption can be directly measured as a component
of lifting the overall weight of the enhanced Lifter. In
an aircraft, the Bernoulli-enhancer energy consumption is
not directly noticeable because lift is indirectly created
from a pressure difference on the wings. Therefore, in an
aircraft, the only noticeable difference should come from
additional drag from the Bernoulli-Enhancer, which in turn
requires additional fuel from the aircraft to overcome.
Bernoulli Enhancer as Aircraft Transmission?
Much
like the transmission in a car is an interface between the
engine and the drive-shaft to provide a nearly-constant
amount of torque and RPM, the Bernoulli-Enhancer can function
as a sort of "transmission for aircraft" because
it can convert a high-pressure, low-volume flow of air to
a high-volume, low-pressure airflow.
This may be especially pertinent to Lifter technology, because
the speed of charge-carrying ions in the air-gap is many
times faster than the wind coming off the blades of a propellor.
Although a propellor moves much less air, the Lifter moves
what it can at a much higher-speed. In fact, the speed of
the charge-carrying air-molecules is fast enough that in
some ways it forms a 'sheet' or 'curtain' of air that interacts
little with the surrounding atmosphere.
By
inserting the Bernoulli-Effect enhancer into the Lifter's
design, a conversion can be achieved to allow the Lifter
to move larger amounts of air at substantially lower-pressures,
which makes the possibility for competing with aircraft
in efficiency an exciting prospect for the future.
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