Henri Coandă

Henri Marie Coandă ( born June 7, 1886 in Bucharest, † November 25, 1972 ) was a Romanian physicist and aerodynamicist. He discovered the Coandă effect named after him.

Henri Marie Coandă was born in Bucharest, the second child of a large family. His father was General Constantin Coandă and politicians. His mother, Aida Danet, was born in Brittany, daughter of French physician Gustave Danet. Even as an old man he remembered alleged to have been fascinated since childhood by the phenomenon of wind.

Coanda's training began at the Petrache Poenaru school in Bucharest, from where he later moved (1896 ) to Sf. Sava Lyceum ( Saint Sava National College ). After three years (1899 ) he went to his father's request (who had provided him for a military career ) for Army Lyceum Iaşi, in which he commissioned officer rank ( Sergeant Major) graduated in 1903. He then continued his education at the Military School of Shipbuilding and artillery in Bucharest. Laid in 1904 with an artillery regiment to Germany, Coandă wrote in the same year at the Technical University in Berlin- Charlottenburg.

Coandă graduated as an artillery officer, but he was more interested in the technical problems of aviation. In 1905 he built a first model airplane with jet drive.

With the Coanda -1910, he built the first aircraft with jet engines (more precisely: Thermojet ). The first test flight is then, on 16 December 1910 he discovered the Coandă effect named after him. He observed during landing of the aircraft, such as the gases and the flames docked from the engine to the fuselage of the aircraft along. In this case, the aircraft caught fire and was completely destroyed. Depending on a replica of this aircraft is located in Muzeul Militar Central in Bucharest and in the departure hall of Bucharest airport named after him.

1911 Coandă built a twin-engine aircraft with one propeller. Two Gnome seven-cylinder radial engines were mounted parallel to the fuselage and worked on a four-bladed wooden propeller.

From 1911 to 1914 he was technical director of the Bristol Aircraft Company, then to 1916 at Delaunay -Belleville, where he designed several airplanes.

In 1935, he built based on the Coanda effect, a flying machine in the form of a flying saucer, which he described as Aerodina Lenticulara. This concept was later further developed in Canada by the company Avro Canada under the name Avro Canada VZ- 9AV Avrocar.

The International Airport of Otopeni is named after him.