Henri Coanda

Picture - Henri Coanda in 1967

Henri Marie Coanda (7 June 1886 - 25 November 1972) was a Romanian inventor, aerodynamics pioneer and builder of an experimental aircraft, the Coanda-1910 described by Coanda in the mid-1950s as the world's first jet, a controversial claim disputed by some and supported by others. He invented a great number of devices, designed a "flying saucer" and discovered the Coanda effect of fluid dynamics.

Life

Early life

Born in Bucharest, Coanda was the second child of a large family. His father was General Constantin Coanda, a mathematics professor at the National School of Bridges and Roads. His mother, Aida Danet, was the daughter of French physician Gustave Danet, and was born in Brittany. He was later to recall that even as a child he was fascinated by the miracle of wind.

Coanda attended Elementary school at the Petrache Poenaru Communal School in Bucharest, then (1896) Began his secondary school career at the Liceu Sf. Sava (Saint Sava National College). After three years (1899), his father, who desired a military career for him, had him transferred to the Military High School in IaÅŸi where he required four additional years to complete high-school. He graduated in 1903 with the rank of sergeant major, and he continued his studies at the School of Artillery, Military, and Naval Engineering in Bucharest. Sent with an artillery regiment to Germany (1904), he enrolled in the Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, Berlin.

Coanda graduated as an artillery officer, but he was more interested in the technical problems of flight. In 1905, he built a missile-aeroplane for the Romanian Army. He continued his studies (1907-1908) at the Montefiore Institute in Lix¨ge, Belgium, where he met Gianni Caproni. In 1908 Coanda returned to Romania to serve as an active officer in the Second Artillery Regiment. His inventor's spirit did not comport well with military discipline and he obtained permission to leave the army, after which he took advantage of his renewed freedom to take a long automobile trip to Isfahan, Teheran, and Tibet.

Aviation activities in France

Upon his return in 1909, he travelled to Paris, where he enrolled in the newly founded x‰cole Nationale Superieure d'Ingenieurs en Construction Aéronautique (now the x‰cole Nationale Supérieure de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace, also known as SUPAERO). One year later (1910) he graduated at the head of the first class of aeronautical engineers.

Picture - Coanda-1910 airplane

In 1910, in the workshop of Gianni Caproni, he designed and built an aircraft known as the Coanda-1910, which he displayed publicly at the second International Aeronautic Salon in Paris that year. The plane used a 4-cylinder piston engine to power a rotary compressor which was intended to propel the craft by a combination of suction at the front and airflow out the rear instead of using a propeller.

Contemporary sources describe the Coanda-1910 as incapable of flight. Years later, after others had developed jet technology, Coanda started making claims that it was a motorjet, and that it actually flew. According to Charles Gibbs-Smith: "There was never any idea of injecting fuel; the machine never flew; it was never destroyed on test; and Flight noted that it was sold to a Monsieur Weyman." Gibbs-Smith continued, "The claim said that after a disastrous crash (which never happened) Coanda wished to begin a 'second aircraft', but 'his funds were exhausted.' Within a year he was ... exhibiting (in October 1911) a brand new propeller-driven machine at the Reims Concours Militaire..." Other aviation writers accepted Coanda's story of his flight tests with the Coanda-1910.

Coanda's colleague at Huyck Corporation, G. Harry Stine-a rocket scientist, author and "the father of American model rocketry"-stated in his book The Hopeful Future that "there were several jet-propelled aircraft in existence at an early time-the Coanda-1910 jet and the 1938 Caproni-Campini Nr.1, the pure jet aircraft flight was made in Germany in 1938". Rolf Sonnemann and Klaus Krug from the University of Technology of Dresden, mentioned in passing in their 1987 book Technik und Technikwissenschaften in der Geschichte (Technology and Technical Sciences in History) that the Coanda-1910 was the world's first jet.

Between 1911 and 1914, he worked as technical manager of the Bristol Aeroplane Company in the United Kingdom, where he designed several aeroplanes known as Bristol-Coanda Monoplanes. In 1912 one of these planes won the first prize at the International Military Aviation Contest in the UK.

In 1915, he returned to France where, working during World War I for Delaunay-Belleville in Saint-Denis, he designed and built three different models of propeller aeroplane, including the Coanda-1916, with two propellers mounted close to the tail. This design was to be reprised in the 1950s Sud Aviation Caravelle transport aeroplane, for which Coanda was a technical consultant.

In the years between the wars, he continued traveling and inventing. In 1934 he was granted a French patent related to the Coanda Effect. During early 1930 he used the same principle as the basis for the design of a jet-powered disc-shaped aircraft called "Aerodina Lenticulara". A small scale model was tested and it fly in 1932 and in 1935 Coanda obtain a patent for his design.

World War II

Coanda spent World War II in occupied France where he worked for the Nazis to help their war effort by developing the turbopropulseur (turbopropeller) drive system from his 1910 biplane into a propulsion system for snow sleds.

Later work

Coanda's research on the Coanda Effect was of interest post-war and became the basis for several investigations of entrained or augmented flow. A small stream of a high-velocity fluid could be used to generate a greater mass flow, at lower velocity. Although eventually unsuccessful for aircraft propulsion, this effect has been widely used on a smaller scale, from packaging machinery for small pills through to the Dyson Air Multiplier bladeless fan.

In 1969, during the early years of the CeauÅŸescu era, he returned to spend his last days in his native Romania, where he served as director of the Institute for Scientific and Technical Creation (INCREST) and in 1971 reorganized, along with professor Elie Carafoli, the Department of Aeronautical Engineering of the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, spinning it off from the Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Coanda died in Bucharest on 25 November 1972 at the age of 86.

Honours and awards

1965: At the International Automation Symposium in New York, Coanda received the Harry Diamond Laboratories Award.
He received an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Aeronautical Society in 1971
Bucharest's Henri Coanda International Airport is named after him.
Award and Grand Gold Medal "Vielles Tiges".
UNESCO Award for Scientific Research
The Medal of French Aeronautics, Order of Merit, and Commander ring

Inventions, and discoveries

1910: The Coanda-1910, an experimental aircraft constructed for air-reactive propulsion
1911: An aircraft powered by two engines driving a single propeller - the configuration cancelled the torque of the engines.
He invented a new decorative material for use in construction, beton-bois; one prominent example of its use is the Palace of Culture, in IaÅŸi.
1926: Working in Romania, Coanda developed a device to detect liquids under ground, useful in petroleum prospecting. Shortly thereafter, in the Persian Gulf region, he designed a system for offshore oil drilling.
Probably the most famous of Coanda's discoveries is the Coanda Effect. After more than 20 years studying this phenomenon along with his colleagues, Coanda described what Albert Metral was later to name the "Coanda Effect". This effect has been utilized in many aeronautical inventions. See Coanda_Effect#Applications
A modular system of sea water desalination and transformation to fresh water, based on solar energy, a clean, ecological and adaptable system,

Quote

"These airplanes we have today are no more than a perfection of a toy made of paper children use to play with. My opinion is we should search for a completely different flying machine, based on other flying principles. I consider the aircraft of the future, that which will take off vertically, fly as usual and land vertically. This flying machine should have no parts in movement. The idea came from the huge power of the cyclons."

Bibliography

Stine, G.H., "The Rises and Falls of Henri-Marie Coanda", Air & Space Smithsonian, Sept. 1989
Dr Henri Coanda Flight International, 13 January 1973 p76

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Source: WikiPedia