Here a project of a Coanda Effect Saucer (CES) stabilized with a 9D0F IMU. The CES UAV, propelled by an electric engine, uses the Coanda effect to take off vertically, fly, hover and land vertically (VTOL). There is no big rotor like on an helicopter and the flight is very stable and safe for the surrounding.
The Coanda Effect has been discovered in1930 by the Romanian aerodynamicist Henri-Marie Coanda (1885-1972). He has observed that a steam of air (or a other fluid) emerging from a nozzle tends to follow a nearby curved surface, if the curvature of the surface or angle the surface makes with the stream is not too sharp.
I use my firmware AutoStab v4.0 installed the ArduIMU+ V2 flat with a special mixer for this device.
Stay tuned on this blog, more to come soon,
Jean-Louis
Comments
You will find below an experiment that I have conducted in 2006 about the measurement of the upward thrust Vs the tangential airflow above one of the "petal" of the saucer hull. The shape curve was the same as the CES v1.2 currently under test.
![](https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3692130833?profile=original)
Today, I have two challenge to meet... The first one is to succeed in a good tuning of the gains of the IMU PIDs for a stable CES hovering, the second is to understand better how to improve the efficiency and the flight enveloppe of the Coanda Effect Saucer in various wind conditions... This is a fascinating challenge...Regards, Jean-Louis
decreasing the lift. Easy enough to test using Jean-Louis's spoon experiment ie make the plastic spoon very
rough by using very coarse sandpaper
demonstrated your last experiment before but not in quite so much detail, I also did'nt know it was called
the Coandra effect so thanks again. However I'm still not sure if the first part of my theory is correct, namely
the downward force created by say a motor/propellor in a tube, being the same as the downward force
created by the exact same motor/propellor, using a Colandra arrangement but without the Colandra effect
having any influence on the respective forces. Regards, Cliff
Regards, Jean-Louis
Conda Cars :))