My work is in flight simulation.
Today was a slow day, so I took a walk thru the hangar and met a
fellow 'thinker' in the engine shop. This fellow was rambling on
about how he had come up with a bypass jet engine design that didn't
require any fan blades.
I asked him about how he would design an engine that could move air
relatively silently. He started talking about laminar airflow. His
analogy was to that of the water fountains that you see sometimes for
display purposes. These fountains can push water extreme distances
and make it appear to be solid glass arches, etc. The water doesn't
disperse and remains in a relatively tight pattern. He says that this
is also the solution to moving air silently. It would be similar to
driving the fluid thru a stack of tiny straws in order to create the
laminar flow. The idea is to reduce the turbulence and send the fluid
at a relatively high velocity but in a very laminar fa****on. It got
me thinking again. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? The desire
is to find a way of moving lots of air as silently as possible.
