hovertex.txt Bill Butler Hovertec Levitation Research hyperdrive@earthlink.net Ground Effect Magnetic Levitation Ground effect machines (GEMs) - also known as hovercraft or air cushion vehicles are supported on a cushion of air rather than wheels or other direct means of contact with the surface. Over water, this gives a GEM the advantage of speed over conven- tional water vehicles due to the elimination of drag. Over land, however, the advantage in efficiency is lost because the power normally consumed by rolling friction must go into creating the air cushion. Nevertheless, a GEM offers many advantages over wheeled vehicles in adaptability, safety, simplicity, and cost. Adaptability No other amphibious vehicle can adapt to diverse terrain as easily as a GEM. Yet because GEMs are so difficult to control, they are not permitted on public roads and highways. Steering on a typical GEM is accomplished by directing air flow across one or more rudders; which, in automotive terms, equates to severe understeer and a high susceptibility to adverse winds. However, by providing a GEM with an attitude control system; steering, as well as braking could be significantly enhanced. High pressure thrusters located fore and aft could provide braking and propulsion, while additional thrusters on the sides of the ve- hicle could provide navigational control and opposition to the centripetal force experi- enced around corners. Safety Since a GEM has no contact with the road, it is unaffected by icy, rough, or slippery surfaces. Collisions are cushioned by the "bumper car" effect, and unidirectional maneuverability not only makes it easier to get in and out of tight spaces, but helps avoid accidents in the first place. Simplicity Without wheels, a transmission, or a mechanical suspension system, a GEM is de- cidedly much simpler than a conventional automobile. In terms of cost, this means far fewer parts to wear out or break. But even if GEMs can be made more road worthy, the sacrifice in fuel efficiency to provide levitation may not justify its widespread use. How- ever, if ground effect machines were electric, they might just have a whole new appeal. Introducing ion field levitation. Ion Field Levitation Rather than floating on a layer of air like conventional ground effect machines, we believe it's possible to float on a layer of ions. The only energy required, other than to produce the ions, would be to keep the ions from flying apart. It is known that a charged particle moving across a magnetic field will experience a force acting on it perpendicular to the particle's direction of motion like shown in Figure 7. Therefore, as long as the charged particle maintains its velocity V, it will continue to spin in a circle of radius r. It is this simple principle that the following hoverboard design is based. How It Works But how are ions spinning in circles going to lift a hoverboard? Perhaps a mental picture will help. Imagine that the ion path shown in Figure 7 contains not one ion, but literally billions, all moving in the same direction. Now imagine a whole stack of these "shells", if you will, extending from the bottom of the hoverboard all the way down to the surface. Now if you consider the repulsive forces between all those closely packed ions, you should get a pretty good idea how a field of ions can support a hoverboard. You can think of the ion shells as building blocks, that when stacked together, form a solid, yet invisible column. Initially, some of the shells will sink into the surface, but as the ions crash into the ground, their charges accumulate on the surface until the net charge is strong enough to repel the remaining shells. At the other end of the column, a charged plate fixed to the bottom of the hover- board pushes the shells downward. And since a magnetic field keeps the ion shells from flying apart, the ions are effectively trapped. Thus, by the mutual forces of repul- sion between the shells, the hoverboard floats. As I'm sure you're aware, ions can have either a positive or a negative charge. If an ion is positive then it has a deficiency of one or more electrons, and if an ion is nega- tive, then it has an excess of one or more electrons. Whenever ions are created, they always occur in opposite pairs. That's because one atom's loss of an electron is anoth- er atom's gain. However, in order for the ion column to work, all the ions must be of the same charge. Ionization by EMR Ins can be created by many different sources including spark gaps, gamma rays, UV waves, X-rays, microwaves, radio waves, and even laser beams. Since all these sources are forms of electromagnetic radiation, large quantities of air can be ionized al- most instantly. However, opposite ions never get too far apart, which makes it difficult to separate them. With additional energy, the opposite ions can be separated, but there's still the problem of them being scattered about. Although this may not seem problemat- ic at first, inside a magnetic field, each ion will spin in a different orbit having a different center and a different radius. Needless to say, chaos would ensue. Ionization by an electric field Fortunately , electromagnetic radiation is not the only means to generate ions. Per- haps you've seen those electronic air cleaners that claim to clean the air by spewing out negative ions. They actually create just as many positive ions, though the positive ions are absorbed by a negatively charged screen. Contradictory as it may seem, the devices do not "emit" electrons or negative ions into the air, although we will refer to their pointed electrodes as "ion emitters" for the sake of simplicity. What really happens is simple. A high voltage creates an intense electric field near the end of the pointed electrode causing electrons to be ripped from their atoms in nearby air molecules. The free electrons, in their rush to get away from the "ion emit- ter", are captured by neutral air molecules thus forming negative ions. The negative ions continue on the same path away from the "ion emitter". Meanwhile, the electron deficient air molecules, or positive ions, are attracted towards a negatively charged screen. Thus we have found a way to effectively separate opposite ions. System Operation In Figure 9, you'll notice there are two ion emitters and two ion columns. This is to take advantage of both poles of the electromagnet. In an actual prototype, two of these electromagnets would be used for stability. You may have also noticed that the two ion columns employ opposite ions. This is to make the overall net charge of the system neutral. Now, unless you notice anything else unusual, we'll begin our walk-through of the system. Power for the system is supplied by an onboard rechargeable battery (not shown). Also not shown is a mini computer which regulates power to the ion emitters and deter- mines the frequency of the magnetic field which we'll talk about subsequently. Now, di- recting our attention to the negative ion emitter, we see a narrow stream of ions emerging from the emitter (No, you can't really see it, we're just imagining; however if you conduct the experiment inside a chamber full of neon gas, maybe you could). The stream immediately forms a circular path which we call a shell. A shell is complete once its net charge becomes high enough to experience a repulsive force from the negatively charged plate. As a completed shell is pushed downward, the ion stream immediately forms a new shell in its place and the cycle continues - pushing down more and more shells every time. As a shell gets farther and farther from the electromagnet, the magnetic field de- creases. Ordinarily, this would cause the ions to spread apart and assume a larger orbit, however, due to the resistance of air, the veloci of the ions decreases as well. Recall- ing the equation for radius from Figure 7: r = mV/qB, we find that if V decreases in pro- portion to the decrease in B, the shells will maintain a constant orbit radius throughout the column (very important). Fortunately we can control the rate at which V decreases through electromagnetic induction. electromagnetic induction is the principle that underlies the electric generator and the betatron particle accelerator. By controlling the frequency and amplitude of the pow- er through the electromagnet, it is possible to regulate the velocity of all the ions in the column despite frequent molecular collisions.