An Impact Proof Ionic Thruster Inspired By Nature (BTC Mark 3)

this video is sponsored by Betterhelp Look, the cat is out of the bag. Ion thrust is rapidly emerging as a viable form of propulsion. It has been successfully used for space applications for decades and MIT launched an ion

thruster

plane in 2018. My job is different though. It paralleled MIT's attempts and we are all racing toward a commercially designed ion-powered aircraft through the Plasma Channel. I have explored two avenues to bring ion-powered aircraft closer to reality, one with modular ion

thruster

s and two, I made a real ion-thrust I-wing. I'll link the videos below. I started with a rough prototype I called the BSI Thruster with a maximum output of 2.3 m/s.

Improving from that platform was the Mark I, which moved four times the volume of air at just under 4 m per second. These thrusters used a sequential design, meaning that the same column of air was electrified and accelerated over and over again throughout the building, and in testing both thrusters it became clear to me that a purely sequential design has its limitations because a column of air in reality can only be I sped up a lot during a walk one day

nature

hit me in the face with a solid reminder leaves use convergence with their veins and are optimized to accumulate sugar in a Central flow walking along water later that day

nature

hit me again waves constructive interference another reminder of convergence, a really beautiful example of one they made made me wonder that perhaps ion thrust could also benefit from a purely convergent approach where no column of air is accelerated twice, seemed simple enough in theory after a 6-we Rabbit Hole of Designing building.

Testing out mods and 3D printing plus a surprising amount of bean water, I stumbled upon a completely new type of Ion Thruster, one that is hollow and relies on peripheral acceleration, so my latest version of an Ion Thruster went very well received not only online but also in person. Last year I attended Open Sauce to meet the fans and brought my setups, including the Thruster. I maintained a booth presence on the floor and honestly, I was inundated with thousands of people wanting to see the Thruster in person the way I go. To open salsa again this year and I will give more details at the end of the video with all the attention this Thruster received.

I took a critical look at the design and there was a lot of room for improvement, namely the structural acceleration method. integrity and avoidance of collisions with obstacles. I'll start with the first one, while sequential acceleration worked well on the Mark I. It used some peripheral intakes, which gave really interesting images of the airflow because most of the flow was coming in from the front, but here it is. The problem is that the first stage required 40 watts and resulted in 2.1 m/s. Think about this after that stage, the air is already moving close to the maximum speed that 40 WTS would give, so upon reaching stage two with identical power, the air is only accelerating to about 3.2 m/second a 50% gain moving to the last stage the air interacts with another 40 watts of power and moves about 4 m per second only a 25% increase this represents diminishing returns the speed increases to begin with were probably just from inputs of additional air from the side that compress the air column combined with a small additional boost of the additional power, so that's the first second is the structural integrity, the positive electrode is made up of a super fragile wire, it hurts me to do this, but not all the propellant.

It doesn't work anymore, only one cable is broken and the entire thruster is kaputo, it couldn't withstand the

impact

of a bird, a small hit with a single finger, which brings me to the next improvement that can be obtained, which is collision avoidance with obstacles, even ignoring the fragile cable, the electrical ground connection. everything inside so that nothing can get through this Thruster period. The BSI Mark II design is effective but self-limiting in designing an Ionic Thruster that can withstand real-world abuse. It needed massive improvements. Full peripheral acceleration without thin cables or obstructions. This means a new topology and that design may have been waiting to be picked up right here from nature, so last year I designed an ion thrust wing.

The individual thrusters on those wings were practically designed to take a hit, so they were the perfect model to work with. So the blades on the bottom right, which are the high voltage positive, and the Streamline tube on the top, which is the electrical ground, there are three of the grounds that will all be connected together, so essentially it will be two high voltage positives that are fed into one. unified terrain, so I'm really curious to see how this works. Let's try it to minimize the variables. I used the same wing power source which produces a meager 30,000 volts, provided that this power the wing thrusters were capable of providing 1.5 to 1.8 m/s.

Same power for the new design. I had high hopes. He feels stronger. Let's see what constructive interference does. It's a big improvement for me. I immediately wanted to see the airflow using dry ice. It is always interesting to see it visualized. I love how focused that flow is. It's man, it's a lot more interesting on its side, but interesting doesn't make a plane fly, so going back to the drawing board, I widened the distance between the electrodes by 4mm, which would allow for a higher voltage input and , therefore faster acceleration of the air, which Then I ran the test right away, it is actually much quieter and feels louder, but it is much quieter, what does the meter say?

Fingers crossed towards the dry ice and you can see the change in speed quite clearly, which also really showed something. Fascinating, that's a really cool effect as the air comes out of the Thruster, you can see a separate column of air being sucked into the side of the Thruster. It's really cool, it's been good progress so far, but I felt like this design could definitely be taken further. and finally I wanted to move a greater volume of air, so I widened the outlet and added longer poses to reduce turbulence. In addition to lengthening the grounds, I also increased the width of the outlet nozzle by about a millimeter, so it is now pumping out a wider column. of air, so if this iteration performs better than previous iterations, we should see identical or hopefully better velocity output, but it's now a wider column of air, so it's actually pumping more air.

This design is quite optimized, so let's see what it can do. come on 1.9 2.5 2.6 that ladies and gentlemen is 2.7 2.7 was enough to almost put out my propane torch or at least show the airflow in a different light, so after a few more iterations with each of them having their own advantage, I decided on a design that pumps 3.1 m/s with an air column that is 50% wider than the previous iteration. In summary, model 1A produced 2.1 M or 1.4 l/second second 1B produced 2, 7 or 1.8 l/s with progressively wider outlets the 1C model produced 2.7 or 2 l/s and 1D led to 3.1 m/s or 3.1 L per second the design had reached a point where That it was time to go bigger and bigger allowed me to try some of that constructive interference that nature so kindly reminds me.

Jumping on form as usual, I sat down for a design session. I initially stacked the design sequentially only to realize that it didn't use convergence very well, so I tried a truly convergent approach that looked more like a torture weapon than a thruster and finally found it. that peripheral location allowed for both convergence and a hollow center which I use in the shape for all my projects and I'll leave a link below so you can try it yourself anyway, on the printer it worked normally. This is a 24 hour print. but with the new Mark 4 only 15, of course, yes, Prusa there is still plenty of time to talk about this video sponsor.

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Technically, a lot of things could go wrong the moment I give it power, but I've done so much testing on the individual thrusters that I don't foresee any real problems arising now when it comes to performance. I have a projection on each of the sides. have an angle of 22° and the air columns will begin to converge approximately 3 cm downstream and approximately 10 cm outside, the air columns should converge completely constructively, forcing the air in a straight line, this converging design being three times the size of the individual thrusters it would require. Three times the power to feed makes sense, so I connected three of the high voltage modules in parallel and ran some tests.

Here I give it about 50% power 2.2 2.3. It's a pretty good start and here I give it about 3/4 27 28. 3 I'm pretty happy with 3 at the moment. Consider that this single stage is 30% more powerful than the original

mark

1 Thruster which only produces 2.3 m/second. I wanted to see this Thruster put together which meant two more stages and some Acrylic to hold it together once assembled it looks pretty cool you have to admit it has a hollow center which is an intentional feature I'll talk about later and it's like it's structurally sound, which is an intentional feature. I still need to determine the individual stage spacing for optimal thrust and that will be the first set of power tests.

I use the same inverter from the Mark 2 thruster which powers a custom flyback and then a four voltage multiplier. long stages that produce approximately 60 KT with the addition of a little more acrylic flash. I connected the negative and positive to the power, placed a 2cm gap and provided 75 watts of power. This is Faith's moment, man, everyone's together, what you're giving. I am reaching 2.8. Well, about 2.8 m/second. I'll take that and then go to a 1cm gap. It's such a small change. I'm not too sure if it will make a difference. He still sounds very angry, yes. still 2.7 2.8 finally no space between stages and without any space between stages 28 29 so a slight improvement I guess really a slight improvement I'm not going to lie.

I was a little surprised by that result. I mean, this design is 100% peripheral input based and any gap on the side simply introduced resistance, so I thought that closing the stages together with zero gap would lead to a bigger performance increase and it didn't. I don't know that science is not perfect, science with optimized space. I went on to try different power levels bringing it up to 130 watts, sitting at 3.4 33 34, that's a pretty decent increase. Then we raise it to 150 watts, whenever it goes higher, man, this is getting up to there 37. Okay, now we have 3.8 m/second, that's pretty good in case we add more.

The energy made anything fall apart or I don't know, I wanted to lock everything in place and finalize the design by first cutting 5cm off each of the supports and printing some plugs. It was solid so I powered it with 165 watts which led to the best numbers yet, yes they topped four at 4m/second, putting this Thruster on par or just above the BSI Mark I and it moves a huge amount of air at 21 l/second and I can think of a couple of ways to demonstrate that air. flow just a touch for science oh shit look how focused the output is and one step ahead of dry ice a huge fog generator 2m away andthat's sick, even though this Mark III booster isn't a huge jump in output, it's still a huge jump.

Forward for example, let's say the thruster is operational as it is now, you can see the fan spinning, let's say a banana flies towards it, it will just go straight down the middle because there are no structures in the center to get in the way . of a colliding object, that's the advantage of peripheral acceleration, banana

proof

, comparing it to the Mark I, the difference is quite obvious, it weighs 490 G, it's not lighter but certainly stronger, this design could benefit from weight reductions and further improvements in speed, which would make it more feasible to use on a plane, but I maintain that it is a step in the right direction and I suppose for the time being I will have to put a couple of these on a boat.

Be sure to subscribe to see all future updates including a full scale ion push ship regarding Open sauce this year's lineup of YouTubers is huge. All the YouTube creators and scientists you love and follow will be there. Adam Savage will patrol the floor. My Portuguese rocket friend will be present, but the question is. I'll see you there, I sincerely hope so because one of the best parts of making these videos is meeting the people who enjoy them. You know how it is, leave your thoughts on this project below and continue being classy.