from helios to our house

Looking at fan blades aerodynamically leads to higher-efficiency cooling

A casual comment started Danny Parker down the trail of invention. A principal research scientist at the Florida Solar
Energy Center in Cocoa, Parker said that a conversation with his father-in-law began his inquiry into ceiling fans. In the five
years since, Parker and his colleagues developed a more efficient fan that today Home Depot sells nationwide.
Ceiling fans that were available five years ago exhibited a strangely prevailing feature. Flat blades were the rule. As
Parker and his father-in-law talked on the porch, the older man, a retired pilot, recalled fan blades looking very much the
same as they did when he was a kid. They hadn't changed in the ensuing years. None had turned aerodynamic.
At about the same time, a study commissioned by Florida Power and Light Co. of Juno Beach reported that energy
savings in Florida from ceiling fans came only with the raising of air conditioner thermostats. When air conditioner
thermostats were not set higher, or when fans ran full time, total electrical load in a house could actually increase, the study
found. The motors turning the blades also produced heat that added to air conditioning burdens.
Researchers in the study projected as much as a 25 percent
energy savings if air conditioned houses could raise their
thermostats several degrees to take advantage of the increased
sensible cooling brought on by air moving over skin.
Using 78F as a baseline thermostat setting, researchers
determined where a setpoint had to be in order for ceiling fans to
reduce energy use. It wasn't until thermostat settings rose to 79
that additional electricity consumed and heat added by fan
motors were overcome by less air conditioning use.
To Parker, improving ceiling fan efficiency could spell
significant savings for the energy consumed by Florida homes
during the long cooling season. Making fans with high-
efficiency motors offered one way of achieving that goal.
Aerodynamic blades offered another, Parker suspected. By
Infrared thermogram of a typical ceiling fan shows heat
generated by the motor. Temperature scale at bottom reads from switching to improved fan blades, Parker hoped that a less
coolest to hottest. expensive, lower-power motor could stand in for the big motors
found on fans moving high volumes of air.
A UL standard for ceiling fans limited blade speed, so the
blade design had to work at rotational rates between 50 and 200
rpm. That presented an immediate hurdle, Parker said. Propellers ordinarily spin much faster, so finding an aerodynamicist
conversant with low-speed applications proved tough.
Eventually, Parker remembered the Gossamer Albatross, the human-powered aircraft that Bryan Allen peddled across the
English Channel in 1979. The propeller on that craft turned slower than those on conventional prop airplanes.

Slow Motion Experts

Partway through construction, prototype blade maker Jeff Sonne holds the
first of four airfoils he would build by hand. He cut balsa sections of the written for low-speed props. Hibbs said he used the
airfoil from the computer-generated plot
In tracking down the Gossamer Albatross and its
predecessor, the Gossamer Condor, Parker came upon
Aerovironment Inc., the company founded by
human-powered aircraft designer Paul McCready. At
the firm's headquarters in Monrovia, Calif., Parker
contacted Bart Hibbs, a critical mission engineer and,
later, Guan Su, an aeromechanical engineer, who
agreed to help him build a better blade.
Parker bought a number of fans and, in examining
them, discovered that the best ones moved air at
velocities near 2 meters a second. Parker asked the
Aerovironment team to match that flow rate in the
new blade configuration, while limiting the fan speed
to 200 rpm so it could meet UL requirements.
A specialist in full laminar flow airfoils, whose
work propels NASA's new Helios solar aircraft,
Hibbs fed Parker's constraints to a program he had
same procedures with which he designed the Helios
propellers (a modified Atkins method) to design the fan

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blades. But when the program prompted him for the fan propeller's forward speed, he entered a very small number rather than
zero to avoid sending the program into convulsions.
A flat paddle's two major flaws are a nearly even chord length over its entire span and a fixed pitch angle, Su explained.
Because the tip of a paddle moves through air faster than its root does, airflow over a conventional fan blade is lowest near
the hub and highest at the tip. Smoothing this distribution would make an entire blade surface contribute equally to moving
air.
Hibbs initially chose a public-domain airfoil, designated GM15, for the fan blade shape. This airfoil originated at the wind
tunnel at the University of Illinois.
But the profile was too thin for the fan, so Hibbs and Su worked up eight fan designs using three other airfoils.
Eventually, a twisted, tapered airfoil emerged that pro-mised twice the efficiency of standard flat-blade fans for moving air.
Their predictions showed that the new blade could meet performance requirements with only 8 watts of electrical power at
the fan shaft.

Less Rapid Prototype

With simulations having helped the decision on the choice of design, Parker and his associates set out to discover a
building method for making the prototype blades. According to Jeff Sonne, a research engineer at FSEC, the first attempts at
prototypeslaying fiberglass over wooden coresfailed. So he began the laborious task of building four blades by hand
with a combination of metal spars, wooden struts and profiles, and balsa skins.
To make each blade, Sonne cut a dozen or so profiles from balsa sheet, then glued them to a thin metal tube every 2
inches, tilting them in accordance with the outlines
plotted by the software. He used an instant glue to set
them rapidly, and followed that with an epoxy coating at
each joint to strengthen the bond. To stiffen the
developing airfoil, Sonne glued small balsa blocks
between adjacent profiles. Then, using several balsa

The first sheets of balsa begin covering the skeletal spar. Manual
building methods produced airfoils that came quite close to the
original design

sheets 1/64-inch thick, he covered the blades.

A testament to the importance of the prototype blades,
Sonne said he spent some 140 hours building the quartet. The After lining up the airfoil profiles and affixing them to the aluminum tube,
skills he acquired building model boats in his youth he applied Sonne added blocks between successive profiles to bump up rigidity
to assembling the quiver of foils.
By spring 1997, Parker and his associates had rigged a test
lab at FSEC. Instrumentation there, which included a hot-wire
anemometer, a digital watt-hour meter, and an infrared
tachometer, was used to compare the flow, power, and speed of the handmade airfoils with the performance of flat blades on
three popular purchased fans.
The researchers checked airflow for all the fans, starting at their axial centerlines and working out through a dozen points
at 6-inch intervals. Diameters did not exceed 52 inches, so the last six measurements in the series revealed how little beyond
the sweep of any fan the cone of moving air extended, regardless of whether its blades were flats or foils.
Two fans, of which one was the experimental unit, hit the same peak airflow. But the experimental fan matched the best
off-the-shelf model while consuming about half the energy. In a side-by-side comparison, where researchers mounted aero-
blades and paddles on identical motors, the foils more than doubled the flow rate of stock blades for the same expenditure of
energy.

Physics, Meet Marketing

As work proceeded on the blades, FSEC also considered what sort of control system would eventually operate a
production version. Many users in Florida ran their fans all the time, surveys showed, even while no one was in a room to

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feel the effects. Many users either had the impression that moving air around actually served to cool it, or they simply left a
fan on all day because it turned out to be the least bothersome way of operating it.
Among the control options considered were a
presence sensing circuit, a thermostatic input,
and a timer. One prototype used a compound
Fresnel lens to monitor movement in a room
panoramically through an infrared motion
detector. FSEC shelved this particular innovation
in the initial production versions, but it did
incorporate both thermostat circuits and timers to
enable the fan to turn and stop in response to
temperature or according to preset durations. The
The handbuilt blades proved concepts; then rapid prototyping took over. Guan Su complexity of operational decisions compared
finally worked on the preproduction prototype last summer, following many with a basic three-speed fan and light kit precluded
refinements to the original design simple wall switch controls. Instead, the production
models take their orders from remote keypads.
The search for manufacturers started in 1997,
Parker said, only to be set back by difficulties in fabricating the aero-blades. Along the way, one manufacturer built many
stereolithographic rapid prototypes, working closely with Su to refine the design. But finding a way to make the blades in
production-size quantities proved frustratingly elusive, Parker said. Eventually, FSEC and Aerovironment began licensing
talks with another manufacturer, King of Fans Inc. of Fort Lauderdale. King of Fans, the maker of Hampton Bay ceiling fans
a brand that Home Depot sells exclusivelyknew about injection molding from the outdoor fans it made with plastic
blades in place of wood.
According to King of Fans' product
development manager, Charles Bucher, a
combination of market demand and UL
requirements forced a slight detuning of the fully
aerodynamic blades. On just about any
residential ceiling fan sold today the blades turn
both ways, he explained. Customers demand it,
possibly a result of industry claims that ceiling
fans promote energy efficiency in summer and
winter. Fan sellers say that reversing a fan's
normal summertime downdraft pushes warm air
off the ceiling, redirecting it into inhabited space
during the heating season.
Whether that's true or notand Parker takes
issue with the claimthe market acted in a way
that sometimes surprises engineers. It told the
manufacturer what would sell, and that wasn't
The Windward II ceiling fan uses a fluorescent bulb to further increase energy
savings. A second model uses incandescent light fixtures
necessarily a design based solely on technical
superiority.
Reversing an aerodynamic blade presents the
knifelike taiwhich ordinarily trails, as a leading
edge, Bucher saidcreating an obvious hazard out
of any fan mounted within arm's reach. UL requirements said no leading edge could be thinner than 1/8 inch.
Making the fan irreversible in the name of efficiency might seem the best solution. Except that a fan without a reverse
switch probably wouldn't sell, Bucher said.
Thus, the dialogue continued between manufacturing engineers at King of Fans and aeromechanical engineers at
Aerovironment. Guan Su and Bart Hibbs tinkered with the profiles, blunting the trailing edge. Under pressure to move into
the manufacturing stage, with the airfoil design having languished for so long in development, it softened until a suitable
shape arrived.

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 Meanwhile, manufacturing decisions and aesthetic judgments started firming up the rest of the design. Though the new
blades needed less power to move the equivalent air
volume of fans using flat paddles, seller and
manufacturer agreed that the production fans would use
the same motor found in other models. This would lessen
the possibility of warranty claims arising out of a
smaller motor whose use had been limited to laboratory
prototypes.
King of Fans smoothed out some of the rough edges in
the prototypes as well. The fan intended to be functional
would have to blend seamlessly into a variety of
interior decors. The importance of pleasing design could not
be emphasized enough, especially for
aerodynamicists who see beauty mainly in the aerodynamic
perfection that underlies mere surface shape.
In the end, two models would emerge, each
available in two finishes. Both would use five Gossamer
Wind blades for a total span of 54 inches. Apart from two
very distinctive shapesone is a sleek, modern fixture whose
motor housing goes unadorned, while the other shows off a
more traditional profileit is their lighting that actually
distinguishes the models from one another.
Parker realized early that few ceiling fans left the
showroom without light kits. A fan, centrally mounted,
offers a logical place to put a light. But more often than
not, the lights use incandescent or halogen bulbs that can
double a fan unit's energy use. Using an infrared tachometer, Parker checks prototype's speed They also add to a home's heat
load. Of the two Gossamer Wing during efficiency testing. Fans were evaluated for airflow and fans, one bucks convention by
power consumption, too.
offering fast-starting fluorescent bulbs. Like the fan itself, the
lights are controlled remotely and include a dimmer and a
timer.
Even after undergoing many redesigns from the original wooden-blade prototype Parker tested back in 1997, the two
production models offer substantial improvements in energy efficiency. According to Home Depot literature, the aero-
dynamic blades move up to 40 percent more air than standard blades. The fans look good, too. Home Depot started selling
them this year and sales have been better than anyone expected.
Home Depot actually sells a third fan that uses the Gossamer Wind blades. Intended for industrial use, it avoids some of
the design restraints that slimmed down the performance gain on the residential models. It needs no reversing switch. It has
no limit on speed because it must be mounted at least 10 feet from the floor. Function played a bigger part than aesthetics did
in its design. Although its three blades do not taper to sharp trailing edges either, owing to manufacturing limitations, they
more closely approach an aerodynamically preferred shape than the others do.
In explaining the brisk sales of the new fans, Parker did not discount forces beyond anyone's control that held up product
introduction until this yeara year in which energy consumers are doing everything they can to lower electricity use. If the
fans had been introduced a couple of years ago instead, when energy wasn't on everyone's mind, sales volume might well
have been smaller.
With the fans moving quickly off store shelves, Su at Aerovironment has returned to Bart Hibbs' computer programs,
trying to figure out how to squeeze another 10 to 20 percent out of the fan's energy use in time for next year's production run.
Specifically, he and Hibbs are looking at a design where the top surface retains the airfoil as the bottom surface flattens, Su
said. The two are also "playing some tricks" to thicken the trailing edge while still gaining the efficiency that a knife edge can
bring, he said.
Other possible enhancements for next year's models include bigger blade spans and motion-sensing controls. A longer
blade could further the reach of moving air. Also, a longer blade could mean better use of energy by the big motors now
driving the current models.
Parker's journey reinforces the notion that it takes more than just a good idea to realize a successful venture. Pitfalls and
compromise await. Reflecting on the trek so far, however, Parker said having a product out there that really works feels very
good.

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