Coandă-1910

The Coandă -1910 was the first aircraft, which was equipped with a kind Thermojet. It was issued by the Romanian physicist and aerodynamicist Henri Marie Coandă in October 1910 at the 2nd Paris Air Show.

Drive design

The aircraft had a very unusual drive, a type Thermojet. It was a mixture of jet engines and piston engines. It used a conventional internal combustion engine to drive a compressor instead of a propeller. The compressed air is mixed with fuel and ignited in the two combustion chambers. The hot exhaust gases were passed back to generate thrust.

In aviation refers to the use of different engines as mixing drive or hybrid drive.

A piston engine, a four cylinder in-line engine, water- cooled and with an output of 50 hp ( 37 kW), operating through a reduction gear to the compressor. At a speed of 1000 rpm, a thrust of 2 kN was generated.

Involuntary flight test

During the ground tests of the engine on December 16, 1910 Coandă was not aware of the power of the drive. The machine shot with him in the air. He lost control and the plane crashed; yet he was thrown from the machine. After the aircraft was destroyed by fire.

During the short flight Coandă was hot, burning gases from the engine to discover along the hull. This probably caused the subsequent fire of the machine. He and many other scientists examined later this effect, which is now called the Coanda effect.

Coandă followed the development of jet propulsion thereafter no further. Only in 1940 was the Italian Caproni Campini CC.2 replicate such a drive.

Museum aircraft

Specifications

Coandă -1910:

195278
de