The Coanda Effect
By Jean-Louis Naudin
created on September 26th, 1999 - JLN Labs - Last update April 4, 2006


The Coanda Effect has been discovered in1930 by the Romanian aerodynamicist Henri-Marie Coanda (1885-1972). He has observed that a steam of air (or a other fluid) emerging from a nozzle tends to follow a nearby curved surface, if the curvature of the surface or angle the surface makes with the stream is not too sharp.

If a stream of water is flowing along a solid surface which is curved slightly from the stream, the water will tend to follow the surface.


Click here to download the US Coanda Patent US 2,108,652 (pdf)
Click here to download the French Coanda Patent FR 796,843 (pdf)

Now, a very simple demonstration :

The Coanda Effect works with any of our usual fluids, such as air at usual temperature, pressures and speeds.

See also : THE COANDA FLYING SAUCER TESTS

You may see also the video of the Coanda Effect in action with a water stream :

RealVideo of the Coanda Effect in action (48kb)

( if you don't have the RealPlayer 5.0, you may download it freely at : http://www.real.com/products/player/ )

To understand better the Coanda effect model applied to an aircraft design, I recommend you to read these papers :

See also ; THE COANDA FLYING SAUCER TESTS ( Repulsin type A )


The Coanda Effect Test Bench (CETB), a very useful engineering tool


The GFS UAV, a Coanda effect flying saucer


Email : JNaudin509@aol.com


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