Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Hilarious and Fascinating

Must read!

2 comments:

Tecumseh said...


Unlike regular superchargers (driven by a crank pulley belt) or turbos (driven by exhaust pressure), Turbonique AP superchargers operated independently of the engine and scavenged no power from it. They appeared to be a spiral turbo with a spark plug, and were engaged with a dash-mounted switch - a sort of prehistoric Nitrous setup.


Sounds like a Coanda turbocharged engine to me:


The Coanda Effect is named after Henry Coanda, a young Romanian Engineer who used the principle to power an aircraft in 1910. Now Split-Cycles, an Australian company, has developed a fan architecture (called Jet-Fan) using this principle and applied it to several products: one, a 1,200W vacuum cleaner, exhibited an air speed of 626.4kmh (or mach 0.51).

The principle has already been used as a replacement for a conventional tail rotor on a helicopter. Other potential uses include: jet engine turbines; cooling fans for buildings, computer chips or car engines; air conditioning equipment; vacuum cleaners; and water jet propulsion systems.

Mr roT said...

Anything that moves air warmer than ambient sounds like Coanda to you up to and including Senator Ted Kennedy.