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Subject: 
Re: hovercraft
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Mon, 2 Dec 2002 15:43:12 GMT
Original-From: 
Steve Baker <SJBAKER1@AIRMAIL.NETsaynotospam>
Viewed: 
571 times
  
For people who are interested in chasing this goal, it would
be interesting if people would post the weight (or mass - if you
have a handy massometer :-) of your contraption - along with it's
'floor area' and the total 'skirt perimeter' length.

Knowing that would allow us to calculate the pressure that we can
maintain with a given skirt design and motor/propellor combination.

Knowing that would allow us to CALCULATE whether a particular
design looks feasible without having to build it first.

I suspect that we could build the deck from Lego baseboards.
They are a lot lighter than plates - but there is a question
of how to get air under them without cutting a large circular
hole!

Perhaps four large grey baseboards - connected together with plates
like this would work:

     ___________     ___________
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |___________|XXX|___________|
    XXXXXXXXXXXX     XXXXXXXXXXXX
    XXXXXXXXXXXX     XXXXXXXXXXXX
    XXXXXXXXXXXX     XXXXXXXXXXXX
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |           |XXX|           |
    |___________|XXX|___________|

(XXX == Plates)

You could still blow air down the hole in the middle.

Building this studs-down would allow the possibility of building
a skirt from a bunch of beams...although it's hard to imagine
that this would be light enough.

But if we knew what pressure these fans could generate (and skirts
could retain) - we'd know what the ratio between the weight of the
hovercraft and it's surface are could reasonably be...and that would
immediately tell us how light the decking material needs to be.

The deck might not need to be very stiff - after all, it's weight
is supported uniformly (more or less) by the air trapped beneath -
and the flexibility might help keep good ground contact on slightly
uneven ground.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
HomeEmail: <sjbaker1@airmail.net>    WorkEmail: <sjbaker@link.com>
HomePage : http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
Projects : http://plib.sf.net    http://tuxaqfh.sf.net
            http://tuxkart.sf.net http://prettypoly.sf.net



Message has 1 Reply:
  Re: hovercraft
 
Pure Lego propellors: I just tried using vehicle windshields as rotor blades. They actually work quite well. Their slope is extremely steep - but I guess that's what you want for small diameter propellors (ie a smaller hole in the top of your (...) (22 years ago, 2-Dec-02, to lugnet.robotics)

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