Thrust To Power
The power needed to generate thrust and the force of the thrust can be related in a non-linear way. In general, . The proportionality constant varies, and can be solved for a uniform flow:
Note that these calculations are only valid for when the incoming air is accelerated from a standstill - for example when hovering.
The inverse of the proportionality constant, the "efficiency" of an otherwise-perfect thruster, is proportional to the area of the cross section of the propelled volume of fluid and the density of the fluid . This helps to explain why moving through water is easier and why aircraft have much larger propellers than watercraft do.
Read more about this topic: Thrust
Famous quotes containing the words thrust and/or power:
“It was at a particular moment in the history of my own rages that I saw the Western world conditioned by the images of Marx, Darwin and Freud; and Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western world. The simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence.”
—William Golding (b. 1911)
“I know not whether the remark is to our honour or otherwise, that lessons of wisdom have never such power over us, as when they are wrought into the heart, through the ground-work of a story which engages the passions: Is it that we are like iron, and must first be heated before we can be wrought upon?”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)