« A crack in the ice? | Main | Hilarious Harvard Exceptionalism »
October 13, 2009
Mmmmm, gadgetry
English inventor-genius James Dyson is coming out with a bladeless fan! Look at that! With my twin loves of gadgets and moving air, will I be able to hold out until the price drops from the absurd $300? Probably. But I'll regret the wait!
Mr Dyson and his team of fluid dynamics engineers developed the technology behind the bladeless fan after studying the performance of an earlier Dyson invention, the Dyson Airblade commercial hand dryer that uses sheets of clean air travelling at 400mph to dry hands far more quickly and efficiently than rivals.A team of fluid dynamics engineers spent four years running hundreds of simulations to precisely measure and optimise the machine's circular aperture and airfoil-shaped ramp before perfecting Dyson's Air Multiplier technology.
"We realised that this inducement, or amplification, effect could be further enhanced by passing airflow over a ramp," says Mr Dyson. "And of course this was the point where the idea of a bladeless fan became a real possibility. Here was a way to create turbulent-free air and finally do away with blades."
The new fan works by drawing air into the base of the machine. The air is forced up into the loop amplifier and accelerated through the 1.3mm annular aperture, creating a jet of air that hugs the airfoil-shaped ramp. While exiting the loop amplifier, the jet pulls air from behind the fan into the airflow (inducement). At the same time, the surrounding air from the front and sides of the machine are forced into the air stream (entrainment), amplifying it 15 times. The result is a constant uninterrupted flow of cooling air.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at October 13, 2009 7:23 AM
Comments
I took some physics as an undergrad, but couldn't make any sense out of their explanation. So, I asked a physics professor about it, and he said he couldn't make any sense of it, either. Nor could others he spoke to.
.....Does that mean it's MAGIC?? --MCT
Posted by: JFP at October 21, 2009 5:20 PM
Well, I don't know about magic. The thinking was that there was an ordinary fan hidden in the base. The innovative part, I guess, would be that this fan is moving a lot more air than normal because of the structure of the loop.
Posted by: JFP at October 22, 2009 11:36 PM