I was just stuck in a car with family for a few hours, boring as hell, but with the help of some caffine and Lacuna Coil I had an idea. If you throw rocks in a pond in series so that one side of all of their ripples are timed to match up, you build up a much larger wave (yes, I'm ripping this off The Core, it was kind of inspiration). I always thought it'd be cool if someone could make an aircraft engine that had no moving (or at least rotating) parts, so it kinda hit me. Instead of spining turbine fans, that need helish attention to design and maintenance, why not use acoustics? A series of speakers lining the inside of a hollow cylinder (which we'll call the engine shell) when pulsed in perfect timing should create a blast wave of some kind out one end of the cylinder, like rocks in a pond. These speakers wouldn't be your ordinary living room cone speakers, probably a series of thousands of solenoids with the cores fixed to a single cylinder of flexible advanced plastic fitted into the cylinder we're calling the engine shell. Or maybe no engine shell, maybe the speaker array could be on the outer surface of the aircraft, relying solely on the creation of an air current around the plane for propulsion. Maybe with enough energy and computing power, an engine like that could get hypersonic speeds? Or would it just sit on the runway and be really loud... I'm assuming that the speakers are running at very high frequency so that not even dogs would hear it, that way more waves of air are being generated by the engine system per millisecond or whatever. But how much energy would be needed...
I'm thinking it'd be an awesome way to achieve flight with solely electrical power and very few parts needing an overhaul every thousand hours or whatever they do with jet engines. Anyone optimistic besides me? or why wouldn't it work?

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Thank you for your interest in our work on the acoustic Stirling heat engine. We hope the sites and links you find here will be useful.


Thermoacoustics at Los Alamos

More Efficient than Other No-Moving-Parts Heat Engines The Acoustic Stirling Heat Engine

Our new heat engine efficiently converts heat to intense acoustic power in a simple device that comprises only pipes and conventional heat exchangers and has no moving parts. The acoustic power can be used directly in acoustic refrigerators or pulse-tube refrigerators to provide heat-driven refrigeration with no moving parts, or it can be used to generate electricity via a linear alternator or other electroacoustic power transducer. Already the engine's 30% efficiency and high reliability may make medium-sized natural-gas liquefaction plants (with a capacity of up to a million gallons per day) and residential cogeneration economically feasible.


World Oil® magazine recently announced the thirteen winners of the “New Horizons” awards. Connecticut-based Praxair received “The New Horizons Idea Award,” for their work with the Los Alamos National Laboratory to liquefy natural gas using thermoacoustics.

Thermoacoustic engines and refrigerators use sound waves instead of moving parts to ultimately convert gas to liquid. An early prototype produced 140 gallons per day of LNG, and a 500 gallon-per-day prototype is close to completion. Praxair and Los Alamos National Laboratory received recognition because their cost-effective process promises to meet demands for liquefying natural gas in many situations.

Los Alamos researchers who worked on this project include: Greg Swift, Scott Backhaus, Carmen Espinoza, Chris Espinoza, David Gardner, and Mike Torrez all of the Condensed Matter and Thermal Physics Group (MST-10).


This work was awarded a 1999 R&D 100 award! The R&D 100 awards program, now in its 37th year, is designed to honor significant commercial promise in products, materials, or processes developed by the international research and development community. Technologies are nominated in open competition and judged by technical experts selected by the Illinois-based R&D Magazine. The magazine uses technical criteria to select the 100 most significant, unique, or promising entries.


http://www.lanl.gov/mst/engine/

One of many links at Google about this research.

I'm a big fan of "just because he/she didn't think of it first, doesn't mean that it not a great thought".

Congratulations on thinking of something which aparently even scientists at Los Alamos consider interesting.
Keep them coming, and one of them will be that one idea which changes the world!


cool link, BTW cosmic, thanks.

Holy crap, I knew someone else beat me to it!!! lol, thanks for the link cosmic, but the device you're showing me converts heat to acoustic energy to liquify gas. pardon me for not being an expert in physics (still in high school), how does this relate to stilumating air flow? thanks again, the support is much appreciated :)

"Thermoacoustic engines and refrigerators use sound waves instead of moving parts to ultimately convert gas to liquid. An early prototype produced 140 gallons per day of LNG, and a 500 gallon-per-day prototype is close to completion. Praxair and Los Alamos National Laboratory received recognition because their cost-effective process promises to meet demands for liquefying natural gas in many situations."


Think about what this could do in production of hydrogen!!


As far as a real engine to power a car or other vehicle I'd think there wouldn't be enough true horsepower made or torque to provide adequet power needed to move large things, IMHO.

"Thermoacoustic engines and refrigerators use sound waves instead of moving parts to ultimately convert gas to liquid. An early prototype produced 140 gallons per day of LNG, and a 500 gallon-per-day prototype is close to completion. Praxair and Los Alamos National Laboratory received recognition because their cost-effective process promises to meet demands for liquefying natural gas in many situations."


Think about what this could do in production of hydrogen!!


As far as a real engine to power a car or other vehicle I'd think there wouldn't be enough true horsepower made or torque to provide adequet power needed to move large things, IMHO.

LNG isn't hydrogen, btw.

But you're right, a truck full of hydrogen would be wasting more energy driving it from A to B than the load is worth. Likewise, a litre of biological fuel costs about another litre fossil fuel to produce.

Most studies tend not to mention these little facts, since it keeps peoples outlook optimistic about what 'technology' can come up with when the fossill fuels run out. The real numbers tend to be somewhat depressing.

that's a bummer, I figured with enough research an airflow could be made around a plane, but it'd be utilizing raw electricity, not chemical combustion. Maybe in the future we'd have a fusion power plant to compliment this system. lol, the dream...