A team of researchers from MIT may have found a new way of powering drones without the use of noisy propellers.  Their idea utilizes the principle of ionic wind.  Also known as ion wind, corona wind, or electric wind, it is an idea that has been around for centuries.  Ionic wind occurs when electrostatic forces from an electrical discharge influences the airflow between conductors.  Imagine how space crafts from shows and movies like Star Trek would simply rise into the air with no moving parts, an image that inspired the lead of this MIT project.

The ionic wind drone was designed by a team under the direction of Steven Barrett from MIT.  Mr. Barrett is a member of MIT’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the leader for both the MIT Electric Aircraft Initiative, and the Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment.  About a decade ago Barrett was looking for ways to create a airplane propulsion system with no moving parts.  He remembered fondly watching episodes of Star Trek and how the ships would silently and smoothly fly off.  He said, “This made me think, in the long-term future, planes shouldn’t have propellers and turbines.  They should be more like the shuttles in Star Trek, that have just a blue glow and silently glide.”  This is when he started looking into how ionic wind could be used to as a propulsion system for aircraft.  

The design Barrett and his team came up with is a drone that resembles a plane.  It looks a bit like a bi winged plane you would build from a hobby stores with a 5m wingspan and weighing only 5lbs.  However on the ends of the wings are panels that angle upwards and supply the plane it’s propulsion system.  On one side of these panels the team has embedded a wire with negative electrodes.  On the opposite facing side of the wing are wires with positive electrodes.  This creates the frame for the airflow between two conductors.  The positive electrodes have an electric charge of 40,000v that they get from a stack of lithium batteries on the fuselage of the drone.  

Once the batteries charge the positive electrodes, the negative electrons from the area surrounding the wings are knocked out.  Once this happens the air in between the two panels is newly ionized and it becomes attracted to the negative electrodes on the opposite wire.  This process then causes the ions in between the wings to bounce off of air molecules millions of times creating a wind force of 200mph.  Now the plane has enough ionic wind power to lift off and glide silently.

Testing was held in MIT’s duPont Athletic Center, the largest indoor testing space they could find with a 60m flight space.  Over the course of 10 test flights, Barrett and his team found that the wings were able to create enough of an ionic propulsion to fly the entire length of the gymnasium.  Barrett was thrilled, but admits that there is still a lot more work to be done.  But the implications of how this could impact the drone industry were not lost on Franck Plouraboue.

Franck Plouraboue is the senior researcher at the Institute of Fluid Mechanics in Toulouse, France.  Although he did not participate in the project lead by Barrett,  Mr. Plouraboue said, “The strength of the results are a direct proof that steady flight of a drone with ionic wind is sustainable (outside of drone applications), it is difficult to infer how much it could influence aircraft  propulsion in the future. Nevertheless, this is not really a weakness but rather an opening for future progress, in a field which is now going to burst.”