MIT researchers demo an airplane with no moving parts - ion drive

[gary]

MIT researchers have flown a model plane 60m indoors using ion thrust.

Originally Posted by Philip E. Ross, IEEE Spectrum, 21 Nov 2018

The plane weighs a little over 2 kilograms (5 pounds), and its engine has a thrust-to-weight ratio roughly comparable to that of a jet engine. Its lithium-ion batteries put out about 500 watts.

Ion drive was first demonstrated 101 years ago by famed rocketeer Robert Goddard, and it’s now routinely used in space, for instance to reposition satellites. Space applications are natural because of the great thrust that can be generated while using a very small amount of propellant, always in short supply up in orbit.

“For every kilogram [of propellant] you take up in space you have to have more propellant in the launch vehicle,” Barrett said, in a press conference run by the journal Nature, which today published the study. “So you use the propellant as efficiently as you can, throwing it behind you as fast as you can. In our application it’s sort of the opposite: You want a large volume of air, and the ion wind is a good way of achieving that objective.”

The researchers produce that wind by running 40,000 volts through a number of thin electrodes at the front of the plane’s 5-meter wingspan. That strips electrons off nitrogen molecules in the air, leaving behind positively charged ions. The ions then shoot toward a second electrode at the back; on the way, they collide with millions of air molecules, pushing them along as well—hence the large volume of air.

Article and videos here :-

https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-...o-moving-parts