Team 665 Fan/s and More

[Tristan Lall]

Originally Posted by Tom Line

Back of the napkin tells me that if you're putting out a uniform 28 mph across a 32 inch fan, you'll get around 340 lbf out of it. Anyone want to check my numbers? I guessed on some of my constants - been a while since I cared about air density

If my numbers are right, conservatively you may get 150 pounds of push out of it. Not too shabby!

How much power would be consumed, in order to generate that? I don't think that airspeed is anywhere close to uniform over the propeller disc.

Anecdotally, I've dealt with a propeller-based system: a 100 lb model aircraft with a pair of 1 250 W (mechanical output) motors and Ø20 in two-bladed propellers with 12 in pitch. In long-duration maximum-power static thrust tests on the ground (there was resistance at the wheels, but not much), it had between 30 lb and 40 lb of thrust. The blades were spinning at over 6 000 rev/min, and the motors were drawing over 40 A each at 40 V. (The aircraft had a conservative flight duration of around 8 minutes at maximum power. When cruising, it needed far less power than that to sustain estimated airspeeds of 100 km/h.)

Incidentally, it's the experience on that project (everyone stayed safe), that fuels my healthy distaste for propeller systems in crowded spaces.