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Author Topic: Small hovercraft....  (Read 1894 times)

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Offline ksquaredTopic starter

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Small hovercraft....
« on: January 08, 2013, 07:44:15 PM »
So, I was contemplating building a very small hovercraft.  I looked at a pretty blue light power supply fan - (I was going to build it out of transparent plastic we have left over from something else) and noticed the pressure created was 2.7 mm/h20.

I did some conversion, and well, this is FAR less than one pound per square foot.

I'm no engineer here, but something tells me that even in an ideal world where the pressure under the skirt of the hovercraft were inflated completely to that pressure, I seriously doubt that the weight of the craft would be supported.

That said, can someone with a little knowledge of errr, fluid dynamics I guess share the love and reveal how one Might calculate the actual pressure needed to lift a very small hovercraft.  (I say very small because the fan surface should be a significant portion of the overall surface area.)

Or is it as simple as the PSI under the hovercraft time the surface area of the hovercraft (I'm assuming it would be somewhat less than the pressure provided by the fan, owing to constant leakage) being greater than the weight of the hovercraft?

Thanks in advance!

Offline newInRobotics

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Re: Small hovercraft....
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2013, 08:13:35 AM »
"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian W

 


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