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Henri Coandă

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Henri Coandă in 1967

Henri Marie Coandă (Romanian pronunciation: [ɑ̃ˈri maˈri ˈko̯andə]; June 7, 1886 – November 25, 1972[1]) was a Romanian inventor, aerodynamics pioneer and builder of an experimental aircraft,[2][3][4][5][6] the Coanda-1910, a turbine propelled aircraft described by Coandă in the mid-1950s as the world's first jet,[7] a controversial claim disputed by some and upheld by others.[8] He discovered the Coandă effect of fluid dynamics.

Life

Born in Bucharest, Coandă was the second child of a large family. His father was General Constantin Coandă, a mathematics professor at the National School of Bridges and Roads. His mother, Aida Danet, was the daughter of French physician Gustave Danet, and was born in Brittany. He was later to recall that even as a child he was fascinated by the miracle of wind.

Coandă attended Elementary school at the Petrache Poenaru Communal School in Bucharest, then (1896) Began his secondary school career at the Liceu Sf. Sava (Saint Sava National College). After three years (1899), his father, who desired a military career for him, had him transferred to the Military High School in Iaşi where he required four additional years to complete high-school. He graduated in 1903 with the rank of sergeant major, and he continued his studies at the School of Artillery, Military, and Naval Engineering in Bucharest. Sent with an artillery regiment to Germany (1904), he enrolled in the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, Berlin.

Coandă graduated as an artillery officer, but he was more interested in the technical problems of flight. In 1905, he built a missile-aeroplane for the Romanian Army. He continued his studies (1907–1908) at the Montefiore Institute in Liège, Belgium, where he met Gianni Caproni. In 1908 Coandă returned to Romania to serve as an active officer in the Second Artillery Regiment. However, his inventor's spirit did not comport well with military discipline. He solicited and obtained permission to leave the army, after which he took advantage of his renewed freedom to take a long automobile trip to Isfahan, Teheran, and Tibet.

Upon his return in 1909, he travelled to Paris, where he enrolled in the newly founded École Nationale Superieure d'Ingenieurs en Construction Aéronautique (now the École Nationale Supérieure de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace, also known as SUPAERO). One year later (1910) he graduated at the head of the first class of aeronautical engineers.

Coandă-1910 airplane

In 1910, in the workshop of Gianni Caproni, he designed and built a turbine powered aircraft, known as the Coandă-1910, which he displayed publicly at the second International Aeronautic Salon in Paris that year. The plane used a 4-cylinder piston engine to power a compressor, which was intended to propel the craft by a combination of suction at the front and airflow out the rear instead of using a propeller. The nature of this drive system is described in several patents Coanda took out on it in 1910 (French), and 1911 (British and Swiss),[9] and was also clearly described as a ducted fan by aeronautical journals reporting the air-show.

Contemporary sources describe the 1910 Coanda as incapable of flight.[10] However years later, after others had developed jet technology, Coanda started making claims that it was a motorjet, and that it actually flew.[8] Charles Gibbs-Smith in his book - ""Aviation: an historical survey from its origins to the end of World War II"" [1] from 1970 said that: <<<'Another unsuccessful, but prophetic, machine was the Coanda biplane ... Although inevitably earth-bound, this aircraft stands as the first full-size attempt at a jet-propelled aeroplane.'>>> agreeing with the pre-eminence of Coanda airplane as the first jet-propelled aircraft but having doubts about its succes in flight.

As well G. Harry Stine, a rocket scientist, a prolific author of aviation and science history books and "the father of American model rocketry", who worked with Coanda and studied his inventions for years stated in his book The hopeful future that "there were several jet-propelled aircraft in existence at an early time-the Coanda-1910 jet and the 1938 Caproni-Campini Nr.1, the pure jet aircraft flight was made in Germany in 1938". Rolf Sonnemann and Klaus Krug from the University of Technology of Dresden, mentioned in passing in their 1987 book Technik und Technikwissenschaften in der Geschichte (Technology and Technical Sciences in History) that the Coandă-1910 was the world's first jet.[11]

In the mid-1950s Coanda described his short flight as follows: while making slight adjustments as the engine warmed up, the thermal jet started the aircraft rolling forward. Not being a pilot, Coanda jumped into the jet aircraft anyway and attempted to fly it. The aircraft took off and Coanda tried to reduce the power of the engine but the airplane crashed and he was ejected from the seat. Walter J. Boyne, former director of the National Air and Space Museum, wrote in an article in 2006:[12] "Romanian inventor Henri Coanda attempted to fly a primitive jet aircraft in 1910, using a four-cylinder internal combustion engine to drive a compressor at 4,000 revolutions per minute. It was equipped with what today might be called an afterburner, producing an estimated 500 pounds of thrust. Countless loyal Coanda fans insist that the airplane flew, others say it merely crashed."[12]

Between 1911 and 1914, he worked as technical manager of the Bristol Aeroplane Company[1] in the United Kingdom, where he designed several aeroplanes known as Bristol-Coanda Monoplanes. In 1912 one of these planes won the first prize at the International Military Aviation Contest in the UK.

In 1915, he returned to France where, working during World War I for Delaunay-Belleville in Saint-Denis, he designed and built three different models of propeller aeroplane, including the Coandă-1916, with two propellers mounted close to the tail. This design was to be reprised in the 1950s Sud Aviation Caravelle transport aeroplane, for which Coandă was a technical consultant.

In the years between the wars, he continued traveling and inventing. In 1934 he was granted a French patent related to the Coandă Effect. In 1932, he used the same principle as the basis for the design of a jet powered disc shape aircraft called "Aerodina Lenticulara".

World War II

Avrocar schematic from the VZ-9 manual

Coanda spent World War II in occupied France where he worked for the Nazis to help their war effort by developing the turbopropulseur (turbopropeller) drive system from his 1910 biplane into a propulsion system for snow sleds.[13] As well his "aerodina lenticulara/flying saucer" patent and "Coanda effect" one was discovered by Nazis in Paris and some sources said he was asked to build a working aircraft based on that patents, but because one such aircraft requested 12 jet engines it never pass apparently the "wind tunnel" testings. Germans at that point desperately needed those engines for Me 262 and Ar 234 aircraft already in production.[citation needed]

Later work

In 1969, during the early years of the Ceauşescu era, he returned to spend his last days in his native Romania, where he served as director of the Institute for Scientific and Technical Creation (INCREST) and in 1971 reorganized, along with professor Elie Carafoli, the Department of Aeronautical Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, spinning it off from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Coandă died in Bucharest November 25, 1972 at the age of 86.

Quotes

"These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a child's toy made of paper. In my opinion, we should search for a completely different flying machine, based on other flying principles. I imagine a future aircraft, which will take off vertically, fly as usual, and land vertically. This flying machine should have no moving parts. This idea came from the huge power of cyclones."

Honours and awards

  • 1965: At the International Automation Symposium in New York, Coandă received the Harry Diamond Laboratories Award.
  • He received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1971[1]
  • Bucharest's Henri Coandă International Airport is named after him.
  • Award and Grand Gold Medal "Vielles Tiges".
  • UNESCO Award for Scientific Research
  • The Medal of French Aeronautics, Order of Merit, and Commander ring

Inventions, activities and discoveries

References

Notes
  1. ^ a b c Flight 1973
  2. ^ Cassier's Magazine (1911) Volume 39, page 199.
  3. ^ Popular Mechanics March 1911. p. 359. a suction turbine that takes the place of the ordinary aeroplane propeller
  4. ^ Technical World Magazine (1911) Volume 15 page 615.
  5. ^ British Patent #GB 191112740 (A)
  6. ^ Swiss Patent CH 58232 (A)
  7. ^ Flight, 14 October 1960. p. 619.
  8. ^ a b Winter, Frank H. (1980). "Ducted Fan or the World's First Jet Plane? The Coanda claim re-examined". The Aeronautical journal. 84. Royal Aeronautical Society: 408.
  9. ^ British Patent #GB191112740 (A); Swiss Patent CH58232 (A)
  10. ^ Aircraft (1910)Volume 1 page 367.
  11. ^ Sonneman, Rolf; Krug, Klaus (1987). Technik und Technikwissenschaften in der Geschichte. Proceedings of the ICOHTEC-Symposium, International Cooperation in History of Technology Committee. Vol. 12. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften Berlin. p. 37.
  12. ^ a b http://www.airforce-magazine.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2006/January%202006/0106engines.aspx
  13. ^ Flight International (1946), volume 50, page 174
  14. ^ 20 July 1916 Flight
Bibliography
  • Stine, G.H., "The Rises and Falls of Henri-Marie Coanda", Air & Space Smithsonian, Sept. 1989
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