Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle

[1][2][3] The WEAV was invented in 2006 by Dr. Subrata Roy,[4] plasma physicist, aerospace engineering professor at the University of Florida, and has been a subject of several patents.

[5][6][7][8][9][10] The WEAV employs no moving parts, and combines the aircraft structure, propulsion, energy production and storage, and control subsystems into one integrated system.

[11] 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.

The Wingless Electromagnetic Air Vehicle (WEAV) is a heavier-than-air flight system which can self-lift, hover, and fly reliably with no moving components.
Schematic of a tri-layer multi-barrier plasma actuator (MBPA) design. Though a tri-layer MBPA design is shown, other configurations are possible.
Comparison of force and effectiveness among various single, bi-layer, and tri-layer MBPA designs
Top and cross-sectional schematic of microscale dielectric barrier discharge plasma actuator