Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle

The Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV) is a heavier than air flight system developed at the University of Florida, funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The WEAV was invented in 2006 by Dr. Subrata Roy, plasma physicist, aerospace engineering professor at the University of Florida, and has been a subject of several patents. The WEAV employs no moving parts, and combines the aircraft structure, propulsion, energy production and storage, and control subsystems into one

integrated system.

Operating mechanism

The WEAV uses a multitude of small electrodes covering the whole wetted area of the aircraft, in a multi-barrier plasma actuator (MBPA) arrangement, an enhancement over dual-electrode dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) systems using multiple layers of dielectric materials and powered electrodes. These electrodes are very close to one another so surrounding air can be ionized using RF AC high voltage of a few tens of kilovolts even at the standard pressure of one atmosphere. The resultant plasma contains ions that are accelerated by the Coulomb force using electrohydrodynamics (EHD) at low altitude and small velocity. The surface of the vehicle acts as an electrostatic fluid accelerator pumping surrounding air as ion wind, radially then downward, so the lower pressure zone on the upper surface and the higher pressure zone underneath the aircraft produces lift and thrust for propulsion and stability. At a higher altitude and to reach greater speeds, a magnetic field is also applied to enhance collisions between electrons and heavy species in the plasma and use the more powerful Lorentz body force to accelerate all charge carriers in the same direction along a radial high speed jet.

Novel technologies

To achieve its mission, the WEAV-related research introduced a number of plasma actuator designs.