Many people find themselves where there is a geographical barrier between their next goal. They might be riding on a golf cart and find a pond between them and their next hole, or there might be an annoying hill they have to climb up to sled? Well their worries are no more for a hovercraft is a very versatile vehicle which can move over water and scale hills!
Hovercrafts have been in the midst of human life for over 60 years. The idea first patented in 1952 and was derived from a British invention in the late 40s and very early 50s. It was then further developed in the following years to fit increasing demands or an amphibious vehicle in the army. The zippo boats used in Vietnam were a type of hovercraft.
A hovercraft works by inflating the skirt around the base of the hovercraft that’s typically made out of rubber or other synthetic materials. This produces the ground effect. The ground effect states that if air is between the surface of an object and the surface of another object, the air will decrease the amount of friction the surface on the bottom has on the surface on top. It is very important that there are small holes in the skirt to let some air escape because if there are none, the ground effect will not take effect due to the lack of air between the hovercraft and the ground, thus the hovercraft will not hover.
Hovercrafts that are balanced typically float only about a few centimeters above the ground due to the weight distribution, and the amount of force needed to make the hovercraft hover. To make a hovercraft hover, the amount of force pushing off the ground needs to be only slightly more than the weight of the hovercraft in order to prevent flying.
If a hovercraft can float but cannot move, what use is it? Tha...
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...how that a hovercraft not only can be used for military use but also for recreational use.
The hovercraft has seen much non-government work as a hunting vehicle and even a flying machine. Hovercrafts have been able to fly because they have been adapted to weigh less than the force propelling them up and by streamlining the hull to be able to be aerodynamic. Because the force pushing on the ground was greater than the weight of the hovercraft, the hovercraft was able to create tons of lift force with the wings, which thus enabled it to bring its wings off the ground/water and fly into the horizon!
Hovercrafts can be used for many things but are not as popular as the normal car these days. So the next time a person is stuck between a pond and their next hole, or have to climb up a hill, they will think of the old but not too old, amazing, all purposeful hovercraft.
In this paper we will discuss the first documented use of helicopters for the primary purpose of Air Ambulances in World War II. During 1943, the United States, British Commonwealth and the Chinese faced the armies of Japan, Thailand and Indian National Army. The Burmese Independent Army started off on the Japanese side, but later switched sides fighting with the allied forces. Under the control of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United States made a decision to support the Chinese during the war with aircraft.1 With Japan controlling much of the Chinese territory, the main supply route for the Chinese was thru the Burma Road. This supply route was essential to operations in the area shaped a restructure for the way supplies would be delivered to soldiers fighting and patients being able to get the urgent care they extremely needed. The only logical and expeditious way to do all of this would be through the use of aircraft flying a supply route known as “the Hump.”2
In 1957, the army began developing a new fighting force based on the helicopter. ...
First of all you will have to understand the principles of flight. An airplane flies because air moving over and under its surfaces, particularly its wings, travels at different velocities, producing a difference in air pressure, low above the wing and high below it. The low pressure exerts a pulling influence, and the high pressure a pushing influence. The lifting force, usually called lift, depends on the shape, area, and tilt of the wing, and on the speed of the aircraft. The shape of the wing causes the air streaming above and below the wing to travel at different velocities. The greater distance over which the air must travel above the curved upper surface forces that air to move faster to keep pace with the air moving along the flat lower surface. According to Bernoulli’s principle, it is this difference in air velocity that produces the difference in air pressure.
Since the time of the World Wars and the Wright brothers, aviation has become a huge part of global society. The Orville and Wilbur Wright’s names will forever be remembered into United States history as the first men who were the first to fully realized human flight. Their successful invention of a working, powered airplane brought about whole new ways of wars, including new strategies for both offense and defense. Many technological advances might not have occurred without the need for new weapons and systems for airplanes. Travel and commerce would be much slower without the usage of airplanes. Orville and Wilbur have made a lasting impact on the world with their invention of a working, human-controlled, powered airplane; who knows what the world would be without it.
Creative engineers can take advantage of the ground effect and create craft called Ekranoplans. These were gigantic boat planes built by the Soviet Union during the Cold War to transport large amounts of material quickly. These planes could only fly in the ground effect (over water, ice, or flat ground) but were very efficient.
In Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, there are flying cars used to track down Montag in part three. In the last section of the book Montag is running from the government because he is under arrest for having books and killing Beatty. Ray Bradbury introduces the flying cars when he says “Two dozen of them flurried, wavering...and then they were plummeting down to land, one by one, here, there, softly kneading the streets where, turned back to beetles, they shrieked along the boulevards or, as suddenly, leapt back into the air, continuing their search”(119). While these flying cars seem so futuristic, the real world is beginning to develop flying cars of its own.
Planes have developed immensely through the years. The Wright brothers developed the first plane in 1903.
All flight is the result of forces acting upon the wings of an airplane that allow it to counteract gravity. Contrary to popular belief, the Bernoulli principle is not responsible for most of the lift generated by an airplanes wings. Rather, the lift is created by air being deflected off the wings and transferring an upward force to those wings.
The Wright brothers started off with small kites testing various principles, such as when wings on one side of the kite were bent the other side would receive more lift. They then moved onto using gliders. The gliders were first flown something like a kite, being held by tethers. They began to fly the gliders, often not getting far off the ground, but they did manage to achieve unpowered flight. It was not until 1903 and the Wright Flyer I that the Wright brothers attempted powered flight. (Kent 562)
Wings create lift for the upward force of an airplane. A great example of how this happens is sticking your hand out of a car window driving down the freeway. The force on your flat palm causes a force that can lift your hand up or down by changing the
On August 17th, 1917, General Jan Christian Smuts, of the Royal Flying Corps, explained the importance of airplanes that they would not just play a role as an auxiliary force within the military, but would create a new form of warfare in the skies:
Up, Up and Away! So your paper airplane takes to the air and glides gentely to the ground but you still don't understand how it is able to glide. Your paper airplane uses lift to carry it through the air and to its landing area. Now you are interested and want to know how lift works. The lift for your paper airplane doesn't work quite the same as a real airplane but understanding how an airplane maintains lift is useful. Now something important to remember is that lift can only happen when in the pressense of a moving fluid and that air has fluid properties.
concentrated their efforts in order to find a new approach for this problem; and the result was
The creation of the airplane dates back to December 17, 1903 in Kitty Hawk North Carolina(inventors.about), which was created by Orville and Wilbur Wright. The experiment for the first plane consisted of taking a man and placing him in the plane and then having the plane raise by its own power, in result this would cause it to fly in a natural manner at even speeds and then defending without any damage (Bellis). The craft they created was called a biplane. A biplane, an aircraft of early design, consists of two sets of wings placed at different levels in a vertical stack with the fuselage(the body of an airplane, containing the cockpit, passenger seating, and cargo) between them. Also the first airplane soared at a height of ten feet and went one hundred twenty feet and touched back down after fifty nine seconds in the air (Bellis). Today theres 1,568 commercial airlines and 23,844 aircrafts in commercial service (Fact Sheet:
Bosnor, Kevin. "How Flying Cars Will Work." Howstuffworks. How Stuff Works Inc., 1998. Web. 24 Jan.