The Genius of Cycloidal Propellers: Future of Flight?

Thanks for watching, it's been great to learn about a technology that is both mature and new in two different applications. Don't forget to get started in Onshape for FREE: onshape.pro/Ziroth%E2%80%8B - You won't regret giving it a try!

My parents owned a small passengership that was sailing on the rhine that had a VSP system from 1936. It was one of the very first production VSP in the world. It ran for 70 years before it finaly broke down and we could not get the parts anymore.

"I have to wonder if it offers any practical advantages" uhh yeah man, me too. That's why I watched the video. Little disappointed you didn't answer that question.

Thank you for mentioning the downsides of cycloidal rotor propellers as well

When I was a small boy back in the 1950s I was given a small, cheap plastic toy aircraft that had horizontal rotating wings. I don’t think it had any power, source you just threw it and it glided a bit with the wings autorotating . I'd forgotten all about this little toy of nearly 70 years ago until I saw this upload. Thanks for the memory!😊

Another minor benefit is that having a horizontal rotation axis makes it easier to balance torque with a variety of rotor configurations.

I’m glad there are still people with the vision to say ‘I know we have a system that works but I want to try a different approach’ this is what we need to advance. Also when you commented on the quieter operation you didn’t mention military applications, I would think they would be the bigger backer of this.

I've never wanted flying cars, or if I did, I grew out of it fast enough to not remember. I've worked in insurance investigations, and know all too well how people drive cars that stay on the ground. Flying car accidents will be next level... EDIT: People saying that helicopters and private planes are like flying cars, no. No they are not. A helo-pilot in Canada has to pass four exams, get a medical certificate, have 40 hours of ground training and 45 of flight training, just to get a license. requirements aren't much different to be a fixed-wing pilot. A driver's license doesn't require school. You have to pass a vision test, a test on knowledge of traffic laws/signs, and pass a road-test.

"Yeah, but, aside from Safety, Efficiency, and Operational Versatility... What has the Voith Schneider Propeller ever done for us!"

Ah hey its the video on Voith-Schneider mentioned in the comments of the previous propeller video! So cool to see someone covering cycloidal rotors and discussing the applications in both marine, airspace and renewables! With renewables, a future video topic may be wind turbine designs? Aside from the typical horizontal axis three blade wind turbines you find everywhere, there's a lot of companies trying to find new ways of doing things. There's a lot of work trying to make small-scale wind, but in large scale as well. Particularly in offshore floating wind a lot of unusual large scale designs have been proposed, since it is the an immature industry that needs cost reductions and radical thinking the most

I love the idea for propulsion and steering on an airship. These mounted on a gymbal to transit from horizontal for lift and propulsion to vertical for steering and propulsion. Brilliant! The flying car is a stupid idea. It always has been. Most people can't drive on the ground; try texting and flying. Forget to put this on the charger and you aren't walking home or pushing it to the nearest charging station when the power cuts.

One of the best information channals i know of without diving too deep into the topic.

I enjoy these ziroth explainers! Good science content with the boring stuff trimmed out. Excellent!

I love onshape and refer many people to it as an experienced solid works user slash engineer. I also worked for Voith and yes the schneider propellar opened my eyes when we installed two on tug boats for navy in simons town south africa. I also got to play with the simulator . it was fun

My kids and I love your videos!   You're a librarian of genius ideas, engineering, and emerging technologies!   Cheers!😀

Thanks for explaining this technology. I learned more than I ever knew about marine propulsion using cycloidal propellers. Love your sense of humor.

Man, love your content. Always appreciate the deep dive, research and the mentions on drawbacks or questions yet to be fully answered. There's one Engineering topic that would tremendously help you understand and then maybe convey to your audience why some of those promising technologies take so much longer to even start to get adopted. It's called Dependability Analysis (gross english translation) or Sûreté de Fonctionnement in it's original French as this originally stemmed from the french Military Nuclear and then Aviation programs that were under a certain level of Secrecy post World War 2 (and based, off course, on a ton of previous work from many more origins civilian & military alike). It's the engineering task of assessing how and why any partial-system can fail and then how the greater complete system would respond, which safenets or redundancies can or should be put in place to ensure the system can still function and/or safely recover. Here if just one of the four cycloidal propellers fails, the whole unit falls down and crashes minimum safe net would be the addition of a parachute. On the jetson craft if one of the 8 motors fail, the 7 others can compensate to ensure a slow descent. If up to 4 of them fail but with each on separate boom, almost same thing. if 2 of the motors from the same boom do, you can shut down all others to initiate a descent with the blades on autorotation. Recovery is still possible. You'd descent a bit faster but still hopefully in non-lifethreatening fashion. On a classic plane all engines can completely fail (which they rarely do) and you can still glide down to safety. One very good exemple of that Dependability topic and it's application was what happened with the Tupolev copy of the Concorde that was actually flown before the Concorde but crashed miserably. Russian spies had managed to steal the Concorde frame plans and had it built in a very short time just to "win the race". The engineers of the Concorde in France and of Bristol Engines in the UK, through their own xp and with the help of those Dependability/SDF thorough analysis had become the best experts in the world at managing vibrations, especially those caused by the engines. They perfectly knew which frequencies had to be favored and which others had to be eliminated at all costs (through materials, designs adjustments, dampening featurs etc) for the whole frame to be able to endure not only the flight constraints from the exterior on supersonic endeavours but also all the inner constraints caused by the very powerful engines themselves. The russian engineers did not possess such fine knowledge, know-how and assessments and that's why their frame shattered on the first presentation flight which ended in a disaster crash.

A difficulty I can see with a working VSP system for flight is there are more moving parts and greater scope for failure. It is one thing for a ship to fail, but quite another thing for an aircraft in the air.

8:54 that dude has nerves of STEEL

it's so cool to see this. I had a problem a while back and kept thinking of a design like this to solve it. It is nice to see that something like what I was thinking actually works