[kach22i]

FYI:

From another forum...................Water and Air versions.

http://hovercraft.org.uk/FUDforum2/index.p...ca0906a36277bf8

I dont know if this will be of interest to anyone, but a year or so ago I visited a company in Berlin called Evologics who make all manner of bio-inspired equipment. They have come up with a new propeller design based on continual planar surfaces that runs with a greater efficiency and with much less noise (this is why we were interested, for underwater propulsion) than a standard propeller. No leading edges on the prop. mean no tip-vortices, so less energy is lost in combating turbulence.

There is not much information about it, but there website is:

http://www.evologics.de/propeller_index.php?sectionID=5

There is a video of the props working on the home page of this website, but is probably in german:

http://www.lexi-tv.de/lexikon/thema.asp?InhaltID=2733

Kinda neat idea, thought someone might find it interesting

Dylan

It must be a bugger to balance, looks interesting.

In the video they show the wing tip of a bird, then why is the end of the fan blade not with multiple tips?



http://www.evologics.de/propeller_index.php?sectionID=5

Even the propeller can still be improved!

With their fanned wing tips, birds already use it longer than the age of mankind, and avionics made the retrofit in the last years. The topic is the principle to split up vortices at the wing tip, known as "winglets" in airplanes.

The consequent further development in aero- and hydrodynamic terms led to a stunningly simple, but even more stunningly efficient propeller.

Whether in aircraft propulsion, marine technology, wind energy or ventilators - this technically new design loses signifcantly less energy to tip vortices, provides an increased efficiency ratio, operates as silent as technically possible and comes with a self-stabilizing shape.