COMPUTING

The Bladeless Fan

lectric fans haven't really changed since their invention in the 1880s. Different materials, new buttons, and safety guards, maybe, but still the ^ ^ ^ ^ same technology, meaning the fan's blades chop the outgoing air, which buffets the air around those sitting next to the fan. Engineers at Dyson, the appliance company in H B ^ ^ ^ Chicago, knew a bladeless fan would put an end to that buffeting, but first they needed to design one. So they called upon the company's Air Multiplier technology to design a line of bladeless fans. The line includes a tower fan, pedestal fan, and desk fan. The Air Multiplier technology is also used for the company's recently released line of room heaters. Engineers began their design by forcing pressurized air through narrow apertures to create jets. But the jets needed to be more powerful to work as a fan, said Frederic Nicolas, Dyson seniorfiuiddynamics engineer. The breakthrough came when engineers noticed that by accelerating air over a ramp they could amplify airflow by as many as 20 times by drawing in surrounding air via processes known as inducement and entrainment, he said. Engineers decided to go with the acceleration of air over a ramp as a working concept. But air intake immediately became a challenge. The fan's motor would have to suck in 20 liters, or more thanfivegallons, of air per second to generate a powerful enough jet of air acceleration over the ramp. ^ ^ ^ ^

This section was written by Associate Editor Jean Thilmany.

The designers soon realized they'd need a 3-D impeller to, in effect, provide the fan's engine. Although the first bladeless fan was released to the retail market in 2009, design work on the 3-D impeller began three years before, Nicolas said. "The challenge was to minimize acoustic emissions and make the quietest fan ever, which is why its rotational speeds are low, not high," he said. Speed andflowrate were also taken into consideration, said Michal Nurzynski, senior research design and development engineer at Dyson. "We had to consider carefully the pressure required to overcome the resistance of the main aperture, and then choose the most suitable impeller technology," Nurzynski said. There are basically three types of impeller: radial, or centrifugal; axial; and mixed-flow, Nurzynski said. The engineers called upon turbomachinery design software to help design the impeller, he added. They used the Agile Engineering Design System. It's from Concepts NREC of White River Junction, Vt. The turbomachinery design software made clear to engineers that a mixed-flow solution offered the best performance, Nurzynski said. They designed an impeller that features nine fins with rows of tiny peripheral holes to reduce the friction caused by colliding high and low air pressure, he said. Birds of prey balance air pressure around their wings in a similar way. And the end result also is a bladeless fan that looks cool, runs quietly, and moves the air without chopping it.

Security Threats Ahead

The year ahead will feature new and increasingly sophisticated means to capture and exploit user data. Those were the findings of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center and the Georgia Tech Research Institute of Atlanta, as reported in an October 2011 joint study. According to experts cited in the report, specific threats for 2012 will include greater use of search poisoning, where attackers use search optimization techniques to bring malicious links to the top of search results. People are more likely to click on a top ranked link. They also expect to see more attacks aimed against mobile Web browsers. The report also found the market for stolen cyber data is expected to evolve, as automatic programs capture private user information shared by social media platforms and sell it to businesses. "We continue to witness cyber attacks of unprecedented sophistication and

reach, demonstrating that malicious actors have the ability to compromise and control millions of computers that belong to governments, private enterprises, and ordinary citizens," said Mustaque Ahamad, director of the security center. "If we're going to prevent motivated adversaries from attacking our systems and stealing our data, the broader community of security researchers must work together to understand emerging threats and to develop proactive security solutions," he added.

IB MECHANICAL ENGINEERING | December 2011

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