I Turned MIT Award Winning Toroidal Propeller Into A PC Fan | Fan Showdown S5 Special

I don't know much about propellers but I suspect that this test wasn't very fair for the Toroidal design:
1. You 3D printed a Toroidal design from a model you made yourself by looking at a picture. And then squished it to fit into a computer fan frame. No matter your 3D modeling skills, there's no way you could've gotten an optimal design on the first try.

2. The Toroidal Propeller in the video I saw earlier didn't seem to have a frame around it, and I suspect that frame changes the conditions of both fans.

3. Your fan blade was 3d printed and I doubt it's the same material quality as the other one. That would likely impact performance.

4. Those propellers were designed for drones. I'm sure that takes a different design than computer fans. What you did here is like taking an LED lightbulb meant for home use and using it as card headlights. It was designed for a different purpose and thus will not perform the role you're testing as well as something that's designed for that purpose.

The Toroidal fans aren't quieter per se, they are just quieter in the higher frequencies that humans associated with the buzzing wings of mosquitos and flies. Therefore, psychologically, humans felt drones were the most annoying sound since it was the same frequency as buzzing insects. The Toroidal fan you tested was noticeably quieter in terms of frequency.

Thank you! Very interesting video! Was watching these thoroidals for a while…

Also for the fan, you need to consider the number of blades of each fan and do a ratio of blades to cfm. 495/9=55, but the Toroidal is 288/6 = 48. So the toroidal is still a distant 2d.

These are ducted with a solid ring near the rotating tips. Not apples to apples at all vs. an outboard motor, aircraft prop, or drone blades.

What i saw was you trying to use something that was designed to move through water and air at high rpms. Most pc fans top at 3000rpm so thats why it falls flat. Your not hitting its required operating parameters.

You've 3D printed a lot of fan components, but I don't see a teeny tiny rotary subwoofer.

The thickness and smoothness of the blade, and material itself, probably all detract

RPM is too low to be effective?

PC fans look similar to ram air parachutes. The blades have a wide and thick middle.

The thing is. Propellers like the have been around for quite some time. They tend to come back up every 3 years. No of course not this EXACT one down to every detail. And they have mostly been proposed for water use. But the full outer ring with a twist in it is not new. If any of them had been revolutionary in the past we would have seen thousands of versions by now.

And no the award doesn't mean anything. We give out such awards to so many failures and dead enders that its only funny in a tragic kind of way.

There is no shroud on any toroidal fan tested before this? even if it was unbalanced it would make a noise more similar to rod knock on a car, or and unbalanced washing machine. @RealEngineering isn't wrong, but the number of thumbs up on his comment over any of the others just below it shows me that we have no hope.

I wonder how it would function with circles coupled inside the three initial circles. 🤔 😉

I wonder if the toroidal design would work better in fast spinning fans like 1.75" fans.

i poo

It might be bossiness for use in hydro power if u use a nosel for controlling water flow to adjust the spin rather than varying blade pitch on turbines

You probably made it wrong

think also the thickness of the blades matter

overlay another three toroidal blates on missin spaces

If you added another elliptical in the toroidal, it would perform a lot better, as it only has effectively 3 full blades, and 3 1/3 of a blade. While the other had what 10 blades. Quite the difference in the amount of air pressure it can produce.

Coming from the car world be like: “oh thats only $5k I spent that on wheels”

Yeah. The prop is as good as it claims and is much quieter and keeps the boat a little more stable at high speeds

It would seem the tolerance on the A12X25's edges are much smaller than the 3D printed toroidal. The purpose of the toroidal is to decrease the noise causing vortices from the tips of blades within a certain range of frequencies (which apparently annoy humans) while producing the same, if not greater, amount of thrust. I would imagine if you could match the cross-sectional area of the toroidal to the A12X25 and decreased the tolerances for the toroidal, it would be a closer contest. I think it would also be a good comparison to take the fan out of the A12X25 and compare it to the toroidal to see if the assertion that the MIT toroidal design is better for drones vs PC cooling. Cheers from an ignorant idea enthusiast.

This is a nice and instructive video.(AI and Virtual Reality: Creating Immersive Experiences with Technology) I hope there is a lot to learn from it.,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

I would be super keen to see you try different blade designs on the drone actually. 3D printed drone upgrades seems awesome.

If you check the videos of said toroidal propelers you will see engineers saying that people bring up that from time to time saying its gonna be revultionary when its just not that impressive, on top of asking people to remodel everything and/or buy the new thing when its just not necessary. The boat propeler for one is much more expensive compared to a regular one for minimal gain.

I will take the lower frequency audio over mosquito fling next to my ear high pitch.

Once I get my octopi installed on my raspberry pi 3 b+ I'm going to print blades for my drone. Wonder if these would work as drone blades?... oh it does work on drones lol didn't get there yet. I'll have to find the file online. I'm just getting into 3d printing so haven't quite figured out the altimaker cura yet.

Bold of you to assume I have the money for a boat...

Did he install it the wrong way round? 🤔

if someone had a $5000 prop i would expect them to know how to use a boat

great idea but they stole your money,they stole the history

I would've tried a rim driven prop. As others alluded to the ducting and turbulence issues. It was also obvious that the MIT torroidal had less blades than the default. So quieter maybe, but less performance. Although you revealed it wasn't quieter either.
Fun experiment, great video!

i think its apples to oranges because of the manufacturing method. Noctuas injection molded accuracy gives it a big advantage. while I don't think it would win anyways, I think if you SLA printed that it would close the performance gap a bit.

Congrats on the 4mil views on this one dude

I see the flaw in your MIT fan. The return point on your leading edge returns to an almost zero angle when it should be returning with as much or more angle as the leading edge in the middle. The fact it got as much thrust as it got is impressive given in the obvious flaws in your angles of attack.

Worth $5000? If it came with a lifetime no questions warranty then maybe.

…………. old technology on boat props

I think the main reason you are seeing the negative on the MIT design is the sheer number of fins. the Noctua has 10 fins where as the MIT effectively only has 3. Would be interesting to see this same design concept but with with more "loops".

I get the feeling that if I hang around this channel for a while I will turn into a fan. One way or another.

this is not a fair comparison. the thickness of the fans aren't the same that even affect the total weight. you have to print the traditional fan and the new fan to have a closer comparison to reality

Noctua still unmatched as ever

Id say more blades. Perhaps mini blades making it into more a helix honey comb.

Great video, but you are missing the point of the MITfan design. Their design competed against 2-3 blade high rpm propellers. You are testing two very different fans. The mere act of ducting the fans reduces the propeller vortices and noise profiles. For better understanding of the advantages of noise reduction of the mit prop v the standard prop, start by testing them without ducting around the propellers. The other item is that the PC fan you are using has a large number of blades, greatly reducing vortex size and intensity. Weight isn't an issue for PC fans, so there isn't a strong weight penalty compared to aviation propellers. Try a igh rpm PC fan with 5 blades or less, and no ducting to see the large difference a toroidal propeller shape makes overall in noise, efficiency and vortex generation. To see the difference the MIt toroidal propeller makes for aviation, test noise and efficiency profiles for a high speed, max 3 blade, unducted propeller compared to the MIT propeller.

I can't wait for Noctua or BeQuiet! to pick up this idea.