Design and Testing of a Hovercraft with Electroaerodynamic Propulsion

Electroaerodynamic (EAD) multistaged ducted (MSD) thrusters are a novel solid-state thruster architecture that has been shown to provide order-of-magnitude improvements in thrust density compared to single-stage EAD thrusters. This makes MSD thrusters well-suited for use in EAD hovercraft, where generating sufficient pressure is crucial for hovering. This study explored the feasibility of a wire-to-airfoil corona discharge MSD thruster powered hovercraft through a scaled-down prototype and final design. The hovercraft was tethered to a ground-based power supply and carried a payload mass to simulate having on-board power electronics to limit the scope of the project. The design of an EAD hovercraft involved applying the principles of hovercraft lift to a design optimization that implements the recently developed EAD MSD thruster model. A hovercraft prototype was designed and constructed to validate the models applied during the design phase and to test hovering capabilities without a payload. Using the manufacturing lessons and insights gathered in the prototype testing, a full-scale model was designed and built to hover while having an additional payload capacity that would be representative of a set of power electronics.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Quiram, Matthew

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Speth, Raymond L.

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/158851

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/158851