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Coanda Soliton Effect

(Original at montalk.net :: (CC) 20 July 04)

Solitons are toroidal waves of energy showing very little dispersion over long distances. Smoke rings, for example, keep their shape for several feet whereas ordinary smoke diffuses immediately and drifts away. Far from a mere curiosity of nature, solitons have tremendous aeronautical and marine engineering applications.

Bad Coanda Example

The Coanda effect was unknown to me until seven years ago, when in an issue of UFO Universe Magazine, it was mentioned in relevance to Nazi saucer research of the late 30's and early 40's. In the article, an illustration of the effect was given as follows: one holds a pie plate at a slight angle beneath running water and observes it flowing over the edge, curling around and adhering to the surface beneath for a few millimeters before dropping down into the sink. The adhering tendency of water, or any fluid, to a curved surface is known as the Coanda effect.

I tried this and the experiment was very unconvincing. The adherence seemed more to be an example of capillary action or surface tension than the mysterious Coanda effect. In Rex Research catalogs an info packet on the Coanda effect was listed, but I neglected to purchase it at the time due to disinterest stemming from the failed experiment. Why could it possibly have failed?

Better Coanda Example

Many years later I ran into the effect again, this time outside a campus lounge. The lounge was separated from the lobby by rounded 2' diameter columns with large glass panels between the columns. There was a half inch gap between a column and its glass panel, with air rushing outward from the gap. Placing my hand a full quarter turn around the column from the gap, I could feel the air current still reaching my palms. This could only mean the film of air followed the column's surface for a considerable distance, unequivocally demonstrating the Coanda effect. How this relates to solitons will be explained shortly.

Encounter with Solitons

In ninth grade, the science teacher pulled out a metal coffee can that looked like a drum with a hole cut in the bottom. When he pinched and released the balloon material stretched across the top, a puff of air would shoot out the bottom which could hit anyone in the back row. Because it was merely air, the puff could not be seen. I had fun shooting my dog across the room with it, as he would bark madly and run in circles from the invisible disturbance. It wasn't until I put smoke in my own version (from burnt paper, not cigarettes, mind you!) that I saw the puffs for what they were: solitons. In this case, they were smoke rings.

Many household items produce solitons, such as empty milk jugs when punched from the sides, or tupperware bowls with holes in the lid and the tupperware bowl I filled with colored water and immersed in my bathtub. The resultant soliton traveled slowly from one end to the other before disintegrating as it hit the wall. I tried making solitons of air in water, but none would result.

Why the first Example was Bad

This in accord with the lounge column Coanda effect revealed what was wrong with the illustration given in UFO Universe Magazine. Apparently the fluid must be of the same density as the medium in which it exists for the effect to work best. Water over the pie plate existed in air, and thus the effect was barely noticeable. Air solitons in water also did not work. Only colored water in water, or air films in air would produce these effects.

Stan Deyo Combines Coanda with Solitons

A year later I ordered a videotaped lecture by Stan Deyo entitled The History of Free Energy and Antigravity from the Adventures Unlimited catalog. To my surprise, Stan spent considerable time on the topic of smoke rings. However, he took it beyond merely that.

In the video, he described a model boat he had built. It combined the Coanda effect and soliton phenomena to produce produce propulsion in water radically efficient relative to simple boat and propeller. The boat paradoxically shot water, beneath water, in the direction it would be propelled. On the bottom front side was a thin slit situated above a hump in the hull, from which water was ejected. The slit and hump looked like a shark's mouth and chin. Water pumped from the slit would curl around the hump and travel toward the back, forming a thin moving film across the bottom surface, almost like a fluid conveyor belt. At the rear was another hump and intake port which sucked the water back in. Thus, the entire bottom half of the boat acted like a tank tread, with water coming out the front, traveling to the rear, and getting sucked back in.

The whole boat, in essence, did not drag across the water, but rolled across it. The wheel itself was a thin film of water which curled around the hump in a Coanda like fashion. Normal boats and their propellers are analogous to horses and ploughs in dirt, requiring considerable energy dispersed in the form of a wake or in ploughed ground. Deyo's boat, however, rolled across the water, leaving no wake, and thus indicates extreme efficiency. A bullet dragging through dirt stops soon, but a ball rolling across ground can go the distance.

Next, Deyo showed black and white government footage of the AVRO craft, supposedly the fed's investigation into the advantages of saucer shaped air crafts. In the footage, the craft could barely lift more than a few feet off the ground. Scientists were puzzled, as the jet engine should have been more than adequate to navigate to the skies. Stan pointed out that because the jet engines blew down, a soliton shape emerged and the whole thing acted as one giant smoke ring whose preferred direction was down. The craft flew at the balance point between the soliton's thrust and that of the jet engine against the ground. The whole experiment was passed off to the public as a failure, ending rumors that the government was responsible for discs being sighted. Of course, the AVRO craft was a failure...until its engines were reversed. Then it took off faster than Clinton's pants.

That is where his lecture ended on this fascinating topic, but my mind was still racing full speed ahead.

Deyo's Ideas Extended

The same principle can be applied to a submarines, I reasoned, shaped like a lemon or football which shoots water out the front tip, curls it to the back, and sucks it back in. The submarine would be encased in a moving layer of water, rolling through the ocean with barely any resistance. Because the surface area of water moving backwards is so large compared to the amount being shot out to the front, the entire thing would move forward. Unbelievable speeds would be possible with such a submarine since it would roll, not drag, through it. A stationary observer would see any ripples in the submarine's fluid skin standing still with respect to the ground, meaning there is really no drag except for fluid friction between the fluid skin and hull--which is considerably less than drag in normal submarines.

Now, the submarine example is similar to Deyo's boat, except in addition to the bottom tread of water, there is a top half. If one were to make the submarine more plump and bring its ends closer together, one would see two treads in the submarine's cross section. This cross section is identical to that of a soliton.

In other words, Deyo's boat and the "yellow" submarine are mechanical equivalents of solitons. If a soliton can go through air or water for long distances with only minute initial input of energy and travel at such speeds, imagine what a self powered motorized soliton could do. Even if speed were limited due to turbulence, the energy efficiency of such a craft would be ludicrous.

Other Examples of Solitons

At certain novelty shops or toy stores, little things called "snakes" are sold, which are water filled balloons with a long hole down the middle. If you try holding it vertically with your hand around it, the thing drops right out and hits the floor, no matter how hard you try to grab onto it from the sides. The Snake is an amusing example of a soliton.

In a recent science news story, an artificial intelligence computer simulation of evolving sea creatures was made and allowed to run for a while. Many creatures evolved whose shape and function was that of a soliton, rotation their skin around their bodies from front to back. This is physically very difficult to do, but the programmers did not incorporate physical limits in their simulation. This merely illustrates that solitons are indeed exemplary of efficiency.

This principle may also be applied to sleek cars or bullet trains, which could blow a film of air out the front, curl it over the top, and suck it in the back. A bystander on the road would feel no wind as the car drove by since the film of air on the car would blow backwards with velocity opposite to the car's. A feather dropped in front of the soliton car as it sped down the highway would quietly rise up, then quickly drop down to its previous position as the car passess...without being blown about as expected. Such a car could achieve greater speed down the road than any other without the soliton mechanism...perhaps alerting the cop who drops his jaw to his chest, then the donut into his coffee without ever realizing the connection.

Solitons and Some UFO's

Looking at some antigravity patents I got from Rex Research which I had ordered years earlier, I came across one particular patent (sorry, don't have the patent or number handy) showing a doughnut shaped disk with arrays of ion needles on its skin. The arrays of needles worked on the principle of ion wind (heavily researched by Townsend Brown in his later years after the feds placed a gag order on his original antigravity work). Air molecules in the vicinity of the needles would become negatively ionized, then repelled, creating wind. In principle, the doughnut shaped craft would create a flow of wind around its hull, going in the top and jetting out the bottom. Unfortunately, the patent holder did not know (or perhaps did not reveal) soliton principles. His craft would have met the same fate as the publicly displayed AVRO craft. However, reversing the needle direction would create a solid state, disc shaped craft that would roll through the air at tremendous speeds and make almost no noise, giving off a faint blue or orange glow due to high voltage necessary for ionic propulsion. Sound familiar, folks?

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Related:

A cousin to the Coanda effect is the Magnus effect. A rotating drum in the wind will transform wind power into forward motion, similar to a sail but more efficiently for comparable surface area. This has been used for propulsion of a ship by Anton Flettner, a German engineer, and by Jacques Cousteau in a similar manner with his turbosail.