James Dyson -is he really a billionaire, as reported in the press? Cool, we desperately need more people who have made serious money from inventions. Some of his have been rubbish, but that’s the point: he will have a better one tomorrow, since he keeps on going.
His latest idea is the air multiplier. As a fan, probably not that great an invention, but as a design object product…sheer genius.
I haven’t done all the fluid dynamics calculations, but today’s invention scales this approach up and applies it to an area for which James won’t hold the patent: helicopters.
Imagine a ring of multipliers arrayed around the fuselage of a helicopter -pointing downwards. Each would be fed from the exhaust of its own jet engine. This would make such a vehicle very much less damage-prone than rotors and even allow conventional ejection seats to operate safely.
(NB this is very different from the VTOL vectoring which eg a Harrier jumpjet performs, due to the entrainment or ‘multiplier’ effect).
