Henri Marie Coandă, Romanian Academic, Engineer, Inventor, Aerodynamics Pioneer and Builder of the World’s First Jet Powered Aircraft

Henri Coandă was born in Bucharest on June 7, 1886, the second child of a large family. His father was General Constantin Coandă, professor of mathematics at the National School of Bridges and Roads in Bucharest and former Prime Minister of Romania for a short period in 1918. His mother, Aida Danet, was the daughter of French physician Gustave Danet, born in Brittany.

From childhood the future engineer and physicist, was fascinated by the miracle of wind, where will remember later. Henri Coandă was the first student of the School of Bucharest Petrache Poenaru, then of St. Sava High School in 1896 where he took the first 3 classes, then at 13 years, was his father, who wanted him to guide career Military, Military High School in Iasi 1899. He graduated in 1903 with the rank of sergeant major and he continued his studies at the School of Artillery, and Naval Engineering in Bucharest.

Henri Coandă followed Artillery Military School in Bucharest, became chief of artillery in 1905. Attracted by the technical sciences has improved his knowledge by studying mechanics at Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg, and then following courses of University of Liège and the Institute of Electrical Montefiori.

Next he entered the School of Aeronautics in Paris, which he graduated in 1909, led the first promotion of this school.

Henri Coandă multilateral possesses, Coandă had other concerns. He studied sculpture, JV-one with Auguste Rodin, who thought him very talented and took cello lessons. Fracture prevented a hand to follow the lead of his artistic concerns.

Henri did not have any 14 years old when he invented a harvester-thresher, combine as one, set in motion the wings of windmills. At 19 years of Army Arsenal built workshops, the Hill Spirii, a model of a plane powered by a rocket. The first concerns stator aviation has had in 1907, in Belgium, where he began to build gliders, with his friend, the Italian Caproni.

In Paris he developed a rich activity in experimental aerodynamics and aircraft construction. Aided by engineer Gustave Eiffel, the scientist Paul Painlevé, the Sratiant and Blériot, Coandă made a phone bank, installed on a locomotive, for aerodynamic testing, with whom he studied aerodynamic phenomena around the wings thick, with slits (1908-1909 ). Between 1910 and 1912 Coandă invented a device for launching aerial torpedo. Shortly made cronofotografic a device for recording the movements of air around bodies fuzelate.

To overcome the crisis of the tin (and in that time there was shortage of raw materials), Coandă invented petrol and oil tanks in concrete. In 1918 he designed prefabricated houses type elements, achieving this purpose a machine design concrete composition heated some mobile billboards.

With its huge labor power, Coandă invented a solar oven for fresh water produced from sea water. To separate salt from water using solar energy will Coandă. A 15 m mirror was to warm air passing through a pipe up to 500 C and to distil it using superheated air that turn sea water into steam. In this way 30-40 calories used to produce a liter of fresh water, which corresponds to the amount of heat developed by an amount less than the petrol from a lighter.

The greatest achievement of the Romanian scientist Henri Coandă was the first jet aircraft in the world. In October 1910, during the second aviation salon in Paris, a poster designed by the hand of Coandă launches first in the world as the “turbocharger” given his last type of airplane, which we present on this occasion.

Coandă was captivated since childhood by the powerful currents of air talazurile trained. The phenomenon of wind pushed the continuous concern for wind energy research. From observing wind bold idea to get a vacuum in the middle atmosphere was just one step but a step that I could do only one man with his mind already acquired literacy issued handcuffs.

Coandă effect was observed on December 19, 1910, during the first flight aeroreactive the world, the aerodrome in Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. Keep track of who left flame nozzle, Coandă surprised that they found.

Instead of being diverted to the outside of the deflector plates instead were attracted and annexed the fuselage walls. Soon after this happened, the observation was reported Coandă and renowned expert in aerodynamics, Theodore von Kármán, of the University of Göttingen, which considering that the phenomenon is discover-rire value, called Coandă effect.

//Sergiu-Adrian Florea & Olinca Hovanet