The Lifter-Craft v1.0 by Jean-Louis Naudin

The Lifter-Craft v1.0
By Jean-Louis Naudin
created on May 6th, 2002 - JLN Labs - Last update May 10, 2002
All informations in this page are published free and are intended for private/educational purposes and not for commercial applications

The purpose of this experiment is to improve the Thrust/Power ratio of the Lifter device. According to the Michael Couch and Evgenij Barsoukov's theory of the Lifter , I have built a new Lifter design with some new improvements :

I have used a very thin enameled corona wire ( 0.05 mm diam ),
the height of the aluminum plate has been reduced to 15 mm for the best efficiency,
the distance between the wire and the aluminum plate has been increased to 70 mm,
the thickness of the plate have been increase to 3 mm and its leading edge is rounded,
the length of each side of the triangular frame has been increased to 300 mm.

TEST #1 with a payload :

The thrust is stronger than with the Lifter1. The device is able to carry 2 g of payload at 36.7 KV @ 657 uA ( 24 Watts ) with a total weight of 6 g, see the photo below.

Comparing to the Lifter1 ( Total weight = 3.3 g with 41.9 KV @ 570 uA ( 23.9 Watts ) ), with this new design the thrust is 1.8 more than with the Lifter1 with the same power requirement. This is very encouraging....

So, I have decided to add, in the center of the Lifter-Craft, a pyramidal box ( see the photos below ) for improving the thrust by using a Bernouilli Effect, I have called this box, the "Bernouilli's enhancer". In a future design, such a pyramidal box will be used as a cargo bay for the on-board electronic equiments ( power supply, batteries, RC components ) :

TEST #2 with the Bernouilli's enhancer :

The resulting thrust is stronger and the power requirement is lower than without the Bernouilli's enhancer ( the pyramidal box ). For a total weight of 7 g, the power requirement is only 18.9 Watts ( 35 KV @ 540 uA ).

The Lifter-Craft design is 2.7 more efficient than the Lifter1...

The leading edge of the aluminum plate is rounded and thicker than in the previous Lifter1 design.

The Lifter-Craft specifications

The Lifter-Craft is an asymmetrical capacitor with one electrode made with a very thin enameled corona wire 0.05 mm diam placed at 70 mm from the main rectangular conductive electrode.

Engine size : Equilateral triangle with each side 300 mm long, 15 mm high and 3 mm thick, made with a 3 mm polystyren foam covered with a thin aluminum sheet ( 12 micrometer thick ) .
Main pyramidal frame : cardboard 200 mm wide and 60 mm height.
Total Weight : 7 g
Power required for a stable flight above the ground : 18.9 Watts ( 35 KV @ 540uA )

See the video of Lifter-Craft experiment

To see the video, the free downloadable RealPlayer is required

Click on the picture above to see the video ( 275 Kb )

Email : JNaudin509@aol.com

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