InfraWave Forum

The noise level of the cantilever fans is encouraging compared to axial fans. Keeping the fan frequency in the infrasonic region meant that the audible noise emanating from the fan is solely due to the aeroacoustics turbulence. Fans using 0.1mm thick steel were practically inaudible. However, the ...

My research started with using Piezoelectric actuators. They are an excellent match with small polymeric fans. The small deflection, low force and low power are a really nice match. However, when I experimented with metallic fan blades and increasing the size of the fan, I could tell that I was ...

When designing the motor support structure and springs, I found it was really important to keep everthing close to a one degree of freedom (DOF) design. What is really nice of a one DOF design is that it responds to vibration like a linear filter. If you excite the system at frequency “X”, it ...

The first motor I designed was a Voice Coil Actuator. This has the same basic components as a loudspeaker. What is great about a voice coil actuator is that within a certain deflection, the force generated by the electromagnet is linear. This linear response is required for loudspeakers, so that it ...

I spent some spare time experimenting with trying to move water with a cantilever fan. This is very challenging. Water is roughly 1000 times denser than air, so requires considerable more energy to get it moving. Energy is put into a cantilever fan by accelerating the mass of the fan, so an ...

A desirable property of a cantilever fan is that when an edge of the fan is placed close to a heated surface, the boundary layer of heated air is physically scraped off the surface and thus improves the heat transfer rate. I envisaged comb shaped fans interleaved through the gaps between the fins of ...

The fan blades were clamped to aluminium support columns. The vibration causes fretting between the clamped surfaces, which quickly cause failure in the fan. I have attached a micrograph of the fretting of the clamped fan surface after 24 hours of operation. Six months of research was required to ...

It is critical to maintain the full-hard temper at the flexing edges of the fan blade. Cutting the sheet with heat destroys the temper. Heat treating fans after cutting is not possible because thin sheets of steel warp in the heat treating process. However, I understand that the razor blade industry ...

The material chosen for the experiments was full hard 301 stainless steel manufactured by H+S Folien https://hs-folien.de/en/home.html and distributed in the UK by Repco Technology ltd https://www.repco-tech.co.uk/ . There are a few materials that could result in higher tip speed fans.

High ...

I can discuss experiments of fan edge geometries for potential noise reduction, heat transfer experiments of fan combs interlaced between heat sink fins and endurance testing.

Peter.