Advantages
- By reducing propeller blade tip losses, the ducted fan is more efficient in producing thrust than a conventional propeller, especially at low speed and high static thrust level (airships, hovercrafts).
- By sizing the ductwork appropriately, the designer can adjust the air velocity through the fan to allow it to operate more efficiently at higher air speeds than a propeller would.
- For the same static thrust, a ducted fan has a smaller diameter than a free propeller, allowing smaller gear.
- Ducted fans are quieter than propellers: they shield the blade noise, and reduce the tip speed and intensity of the tip vortices both of which contribute to noise production.
- Ducted fans can allow for a limited amount of thrust vectoring, something normal propellers are not well suited for. This allows them to be used instead of tiltrotors in some applications.
- Ducted fans offer enhanced safety on the ground.
Read more about this topic: Ducted Fan
Famous quotes containing the word advantages:
“If we live in the Nineteenth Century, why should we not enjoy the advantages which the Nineteenth Century offers? Why should our life be in any respect provincial?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“When the manipulations of childhood are a little larceny, they may grow and change with the child into qualities useful and admire in the grown-up world. When they are the futile struggle for love and concern and protection, they may become the warped and ruthless machinations of adults who seek in the advantages of power what they could never win as children.”
—Leontine Young (20th century)
“There are great advantages to seeing yourself as an accident created by amateur parents as they practiced. You then have been left in an imperfect state and the rest is up to you. Only the most pitifully inept child requires perfection from parents.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)