Everything about Coand -1910 totally explained
| Coandă-1910 |
|
| Technical Details |
| Span
| 10.3 m |
| Length
| 12.5 m |
| Wing Area
| 32.7 m² |
| Weight
| 420 kg |
| Powerplant
| Four-cylinder, In-line, Water-cooled engine developing 50 hp (37 kW) at 1,000 rpm driving a compressor designed to produce a thrust of approx. 2 kN (450 lbf) |
The
Coandă-1910 was the first jet-propelled aircraft ever built. It was constructed by
Romanian inventor
Henri Coandă and exhibited by him at the Second International Aeronautical Exhibition in
Paris around October
1910.
The aircraft was quite unconventional in design, and its most striking feature was its powerplant, since it featured a kind of
motorjet, a hybrid of
jet engines and
piston engine technology. This used an ordinary internal combustion engine to drive a
compressor instead of a
propeller. The compressed air was mixed with fuel and ignited in two combustion chambers (one on each side of the
fuselage) before being exhausted along the sides of the aircraft. This was intended to provide a reactive force that would push the aircraft along.
Other than the radical propulsion system, the airframe construction was conventional for the time. Wood-frame fabric-covered
biplane wings ran above and below the fuselage, held in place by struts and flying wires. The
powerplant was installed in the nose of a fabric-covered fuselage which contained one seat in an open
cockpit. The fuselage terminated in a cruciform
empennage installed at 45
o.
Unfortunately during a ground test of the engine on
December 16,
1910, Coandă was caught unaware by the power of the engine and found himself briefly airborne. He lost control of the machine, and it crashed, burning, to the ground. Coandă was thrown clear of the crash.
During the machine's short flight, Coandă was able to observe that the burning gases from the engine seemed to hug the sides of the aircraft very closely and this is what seemed to cause the fire. He (and other scientists) spent many years researching this effect, which is now known as the
Coandă effect in his honour.
Coandă didn't pursue this line of development of the jet engine. However, years later, the
Italian Campini Caproni CC.2 aircraft would fly with a similar type of engine, and
Japanese engineers would develop another such engine to power
kamikaze aircraft. However, practical jet engines depended on the development of the
turbojet to become a reality.
Further Information
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