Timeline for Could a Dyson fan scale up to be used as a bladeless aircraft engine?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 8, 2021 at 20:18 | comment | added | Falcon | Apparently, someone started a company to test this hypothesis. jetoptera.com/research-and-development | |
| Mar 4, 2019 at 2:52 | history | protected | CommunityBot | ||
| Jan 9, 2019 at 22:47 | answer | added | Urquiola | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jul 26, 2018 at 13:32 | comment | added | alephzero | Having just had the misfortune to spend 10 days (24 hours/day) in a building where the only aircon was Dyson's so-called "fans", except for a solitary no-brand Chinese-made beast with metal rotating blades (10x less expensive, 10x more effiective), bluntly they are no use for anything whatever, unless you consider them as modern sculptures. My personal impression that Dyson's target market sector is "people with more money than sense who want to support British engineering but know nothing about engineering* was strongly reinforced - they are utterly useless for actually moving air. | |
| Jul 26, 2018 at 12:51 | comment | added | Agent_L | @DavidRicherby Yes, smaller and in an obscured position, that exactly are the main problems. An intake is safe up in the air, when there aren't any objects, and unsafe when close to the desk surface where small things are stored and dust accumulates. Secondly, the smaller the intake for a given airflow, the harder it sucks air in and is more likely to pick up and ingest foreign objects. If you wonder about people deliberately sticking things into the fan, then indeed Dyson has psychological advantage because the large main loop diverts attention from the actual intake. Not technical one. | |
| Jul 26, 2018 at 12:22 | comment | added | David Richerby | @Agent_L The intake is smaller and in an obscured position, which makes it harder to stick things into it than through the widely spaced mesh of a conventional desk fan. | |
| Jul 26, 2018 at 9:57 | comment | added | Agent_L | @DavidRicherby All desk fans are enclosed in a wire mesh. Conventional fan sucks at low pressure through large area of mesh, through many openings, Dyson sucks at high pressure through small area of mesh, through few openings. I believe that my claim is complete. I compare Dyson fans to desk fans, not to turbofan aircraft engines. | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 19:06 | comment | added | rclocher3 | @JohnK I don't know about Dyson's aerodynamics, but the design of their small reluctance motors and brushless motors are pretty revolutionary for consumer products. | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 13:56 | comment | added | Flater | @DavidRicherby: Other than ceiling fans, I haven't seen a fan that wasn't enclosed anyway. You're right that it's enclosed, but to are the "traditional" fan blades. The only real difference is the speed at which the blades rotate. Higher speed = higher stress = higher break chance (but I do agree that safety isn't the operative word here, but rather durability). | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 12:43 | answer | added | Penguin | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 12:24 | comment | added | David Richerby | @Agent_L Your safety claim is incomplete. The Dyson fan has a small enclosed high-speed fan: higher speed makes things more dangerous but more enclosure makes them safer (in general). You're only considering one of the competing factors. | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 10:46 | comment | added | Agent_L | Have you ever used a Dyson fan, and compared it to a decent conventional fan (in same price bracket)? Dyson is a gimmick that puts unusual looks over function. There still is fan intake, it's just placed where you're not looking for it. Safety is even worse, because instead of large, low speed fan, there is small, high speed one that sucks more violently. Roadblocks are irrelevant where given tech offers no benefits nor solves any problems. | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 9:45 | comment | added | Willtech | If you do not know, the Dyson fan is essentially the design of a jet engine's airflow, with the fan repositioned with ducting rather than having the fan jet turbine inline. It could be argued that development of what you have suggested would result in the typical design seen already. | |
| Jul 25, 2018 at 6:34 | comment | added | Federico | @RomaH is not an impression. Turbulence increases mixing, and thus heat transport away from the surface. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 21:06 | comment | added | Richard | In theory, yes, but it'd cost you £300M and only hipsters could fly on it | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 19:20 | vote | accept | Geoff | ||
| Jul 24, 2018 at 19:14 | comment | added | Mark | @JohnK, Dyson's cyclone separator is impressive in its way. Industrial cyclone separators are usually pretty touchy about operating conditions, while Dyson made one robust enough to work in a household vacuum cleaner. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 18:48 | comment | added | RomaH | Humorously, turbulent airflow is generally perceived as more cooling to the human skin, than smooth or laminar flows too. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 18:13 | history | edited | Pondlife | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jul 24, 2018 at 18:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackAviation/status/1021817313866264577 | ||
| Jul 24, 2018 at 16:12 | answer | added | Therac | timeline score: 87 | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 16:00 | comment | added | John K | The Dyson is just an ejector pump using a electrically driven centrifugal compressor to create the jet, and arranged in an artful way. It would seem to be a very inefficient way to make thrust, with all the friction losses and such, but it would be interesting to see if the Dyson uses more or less wattage per cfm of air moved than a regular bladed fan (because it's the air being moved that is the thrust). Dyson's marketing tries to portray his inventions, like the particle separator vacuum design, as groundbreaking, but those things have been used in industrial processes for decades. | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 15:49 | comment | added | user3528438 | The theory is to use high pressure flow to generate a high velocity jet, and the jet would induce a lower velocity flow at a higher volume (the x15 number above). Since the purpose for an engine is to generate thrust rather than moving air, the the core of this question becomes "does this high velocity to high volume conversion generate lift" or "is a ring nozzle better than a conventional circular nozzle". I guess answers to both are "No". | |
| Jul 24, 2018 at 15:30 | history | asked | Geoff | CC BY-SA 4.0 |