The World's Quietest Drone Engine | Ian Villa, Whisper Aero

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Күн бұрын

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@liminalsunset 4 ай бұрын

There's a picture/video of the actual impeller on their website. About 70 or so straight metal blades, finely spaced, with a metal ring around them, like jet engines and other turbomachinery. It sounds like the Dyson hair dryer. In their video, the maximum frequency of the spectrogram they show is 10 kHz. If you make a frequency analysis of your own, you will find there is a peak at 11.8 kHz. Quieter, sure, but there is nothing "ultrasonic" about it. Humans can usually hear easily up to at least 16 kHz, and if you do not listen loudly to headphones, up to 20 kHz+. And of course, if you reduce the RPM/power of the fan like when it is spooling down in the video, all of the blade passing frequencies enter the 5-6kHz region, which the ear is particularly sensitive to.

@JoelSapp 4 ай бұрын

This a low key advance that could make millions licensing. In my town we just banned gas leaf blowers. The big battery electric ones are quieter but marginally. This will be awesome for a future that has electric VTOL as well. Very cool.

@1stPrinciplesFM 4 ай бұрын

The leaf blower is remarkably quiet. The thumbnail is true... my wife was carrying my sleeping baby while we tested out Whisper's demo leafblower, and he didn't even wake up.

@tdolso 3 ай бұрын

@@1stPrinciplesFM Love it. My Daughter normally covers her ears and cries / runs away whenever a leaf blower comes by.

@tristanjones7735 4 ай бұрын

I only see 2 issues. 1: Multiple engines, multiple bearings, less efficiency. Maybe better packaging and weight distribution makes up for the efficiency loss? IDK. Problem 2: I don't know that you can just stick a bunch of engines on a wing like that and not have increased drag. But again, maybe it's not that big of a deal compared to having a single big engine off the wing. I feel like the idea of multi micro engines has been tried before and I think there is a reason we don't do it. But I hope I am wrong. I like the concept. The engineering is solid. And you have a working prototype. I like everything about this.

@grekiki 3 ай бұрын

As long as propellers are big enough for Reynolds to not matter(20" should be more than enough), there shouldn't be much efficiency loss from multiple engines.

@FriedrichWinkler 2 ай бұрын

There is also lots of effiency gains from multiple engines for example from pushing air over an airfoil increasing the effiency of the airfoil.

@atw98 2 ай бұрын

Have you not seen emergency cell tower drones? They have 10 engines on each wing. He's just explained his engines are smaller he hasn't gone to scale. Each engine has its own bearings? Every motor has its own bearings

@fatmanslimhealthspan 2 ай бұрын

Think that’s why they’re selling the tech for leaf blowing machines too noise reduction

@WellHiddenTreasure Ай бұрын

Bearings for a larger motor will need to be larger. Increasing the diameter of let's say a ball (in the ball bearing) 2x increases its weight 8 times. Same increase for thermal mass and as mentioned you'd need external cooling rather than blowing it away.

@dylanbrusstar6646 2 ай бұрын

7:01 ‘if a machine creates noise, it’s losing energy and efficiency’ , (this concept sounds like it should be a principal of sorts)

@Foodhat 2 ай бұрын

I think there's a typo in your comment

@dylanbrusstar6646 2 ай бұрын

You’re right, I wrote sound twice, thank you. I fixed it.

@RKisBae 2 ай бұрын

unless the purpose of the machine is to create noise

@Berkana Ай бұрын

This is fascinating. This is basically the opposite approach of the Zipline drone propellers, which lower the blade pass frequency as much as possible.

@SteveWindsurf 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for socializing this technology. For the leaf blower, much of the remaining noise appears to be mechanical vibration amplified by the construction. Without the mechanical noise, the higher fan blade frequency is definitely still audible, makes me wonder if truly ultrasonic is at all possible without cavitation (high turbulence or slip, or whatever you call it). There is no perfect fan but excellence has value.

@1stPrinciplesFM 2 ай бұрын

Not pictured was the pretty jank electrical setup for the thing hahaha. Still definitely a prototype. I think they intend to sell the engines as components rather than build a consumer-facing leaf blower

@AdvantestInc 4 ай бұрын

Ian Villa’s insights on noise reduction in electric engines highlight the importance of balancing efficiency with environmental impact. How do you see this technology influencing regional air travel in the next decade?

@1stPrinciplesFM 4 ай бұрын

If drones & VTOLs are going to be ubiquitous, I'd MUCH rather have them be quiet...

@pauldamiandumais 4 ай бұрын

I'd love to know what their kg/kw is at cruise speed and thrust levels.

@paulstanton2357 13 күн бұрын

Very interesting.

@cconnon1912 2 ай бұрын

When you make something using these principles, very quiet, you will give up something else. It might be speed. It might be drone climb or some of their factor that they’re not mentioning here as a casualty of new technology.

@1stPrinciplesFM 2 ай бұрын

The downside is that it can't spin very fast or get very big, or it flies apart. So they have to rely on 1) efficiency and 2) many smaller engines to get a lot of thrust

@sadface7457 4 ай бұрын

This feels impossible with current technology we just dont have energy density in batteries.

@sadface7457 4 ай бұрын

General electric has a interesting hybrid electric jet. Where they replace the gearbox in tradition turboject with an electric system.

@1stPrinciplesFM 4 ай бұрын

I'm extremely excited about that kind of thing generally. The first episode we did on this channel was with Astro Mechanica who is a startup doing something similar

@sadface7457 4 ай бұрын

2:53 Actually this is amazing 👏 🙌😅

@1stPrinciplesFM 4 ай бұрын

it's wild