this video is sponsored by Hoymiles
engineers at MIT and a company out of Detroit Call sharrow engineering have made a breakthrough by
creating the world's first toroidal propellers these Innovative propellers use a ring or donut
shaped blade design that allows for greater Energy Efficiency reduced noise and increased thrust and
I got hundreds of diy-ers on YouTube 3D printing their own but sadly almost all of them failed to
get the results they expected especially for drones so is this design a real breakthrough
is it even all that new and what could it do for the future of things like cargo ships across the
Atlantic and Pacific air taxis and drones let's find out I'm Ricky and this is Two Bit da Vinci
you might not know this about me but I'm a mechanical engineer and in mechanical engineering
is not very common to see huge increases in performance in one model to another normally
you'll see one or two percent increases now that's important because those add up over time to make
internal combustion engines or DC motors better and better little by little now when you see huge
improvements in just one change that is really rare and special that's why when I first heard
about a new boat propeller design reported to be 105 more efficient that can improve a boat's
fuel efficiency and top speed by as much as 46 and 27 respectively while at the same time operating
much more smoothly and quietly I was definitely interested and you should be as well by the way
since as I'll explain in today's video this can have a huge impact on our day-to-day lives even
if we never as much as set foot on a boat boat propellers have been around for almost
200 years the first screw type propeller was allegedly invented all the way back in 1826 by
Czech Austrian inventor called Joseph Russell and based on an Archimedes screw design that's
more than 2200 years old but the more modern version with individual blades like the ones we
see on most boats today was discovered by chance in 1835 by the English inventor Francis petite
Smith according to one story Smith was testing a new screw propeller design by running a boat in
some English canals when he broke off a piece of the propeller and to Smith surprised the broken
propeller doubled the boat's previous speed from about 4 miles per hour to about eight Smith would
later patent this accidental Discovery what is it about accidental discoveries that I just love like
the discovery of rubber video in the description others also credit the American inventor John
Erickson known for building the SS Monitor and the French inventor Frederick savall both of whom had
already filed for separate patents for a similar screw propeller design around the same time Smith
did but before we get back to that let me take a quick minute and tell you about our sponsor
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the show here's the crazy part after nearly two centuries of building better boats and propellers
the overall design has remained pretty much the same as it did back in 1836. talk about nailing
a great design that is until the appearance of the Toronto boat propeller the toroidal propeller
is a new design invented by Gregory Cheryl and sold through his company Cheryl Marine the MX3
propeller for recreational boats has been very successful and has won multiple Awards including
the 2020 and MMA Innovation award and the 2022 Marine power Innovation award from boating
magazine and now it's even popular on YouTube amongst the boating community it all has to do
with the MX props awesome performance which is backed by tons of real world data from all of
Cheryl Marine's customers you see every time char Marine sells one of its props it sends a team down
to install and validate its performance the most significant success was a client who installed
MX props on a galleon 325 GTO with twin Mercury 400 horsepower outboard motors and saw the rotor
efficiency increase from 38 to 78 percent at 4000 RPM that's an increase of 105 percent by the way
propeller efficiency is a bit different from other efficiency metrics we've discussed before on this
channel it measures how well the prop converts the motor's power into thrust which is what pushes the
boat forward for example an efficiency of 50 means that if your motor is pumping out 300 horsepower
or approximately 220 kilowatts the propeller is producing 110 kilonewtons of thrust or around 25
000 pounds of force although it obviously plays a role in it propeller efficiency doesn't refer
to how well the energy in the fuel is converted into motion that's called fuel efficiency and
is usually measured in miles per gallon what this 105 increase really means is that just by swapping
the props your boat gets over twice as much thrust even though the motor is running at the same speed
several Specialists from the Boating industry have also done their independent studies to
review these props for example boat test evaluated a 57-foot catamaran Voodoo powered by a pair of
300 horsepower oxe diesel outboard engines and found that the props increased fuel efficiency
by 46 from 0.72 miles per gallon to 1.05 miles per gallon now those numbers sound really low
but remember these are boats are moving through the water it's a different ball game don't compare
to cars that change is still really dramatic the props were also much quieter and vibrated
less than the standard props they had before it if you're a boater besides spending much less on fuel
this has the added benefit of being able to talk without yelling at each other at cruising speed
something you could only experience with a closed cabin and less vibration also means more longevity
for mechanical systems let's look at cost this is where things get interesting because Cheryl props
are crazy expensive they cost 10 times as much as their arrivals running up around five thousand
dollars each and if you have a boat that has twin engines well that's 10 grand just for propellers
for reference the standard high quality propeller of the same size and Pitch costs only around 500
on Amazon the good news is that you can recover this investment quite quickly depending on how
frequently you use your boat and the average fuel price let's take the voodoo catamaran as
an example with its 46 improved fuel efficiency the boat's crew speed is 18 knots or 20.7 miles
per hour and a typical recreational boat is used between 75 and 150 hours per year let's average
that to 100 hours and so that'll be around 2070 miles every year at that speed fuel efficiency
is around 1.05 miles per gallon for the MX props and 0.72 miles per gallon for the standard prop
so you would consume 1971 gallons of fuel with the Cheryl MX and 2875 gallons with the standard
propeller that means that the sharo prop saves you around 900 gallons of fuel every year and
that's per boat with diesel prices at around four dollars per gallon that's 3 600 saved on
fuel alone every single year so it only takes you around three years to get your money back and some
marinas are selling diesel at five dollars and seventy cents per gallon so you could break even
even quicker not too shabby the MX3 is a popular swap-on replacement for small recreational boats
and the best thing is that you can buy them right now but Cheryl also designs bigger more
complex Turtle props for the Boating manufacturers that aren't end users they have several different
exotic designs on their patents two of which were translated into the NX series of propellers
speaking of patents the YouTube channel xeroth recently made a video about Cheryl's propellers
which we'll link to after this one you should definitely check it out where he correctly pointed
out that the toroidal design may not really have even been share idea since there was a much older
Australian patent from 1969 granted to David B sigin for an undulating flow promoting rotor that
fits the description of a toroidal propeller but I found an even older patent from 1892
by an English inventor named Charles Myers who designed something that remarkably resembles the
MX propellers with some variations and dimensions and other parameters but wait there's more in I
guess that's cheesy all right I found another more recent patent from 2005 granted to Ronald
r polacek that more closely resembles Cheryl's design it seems like the idea of a loop-shaped
toroidal propeller wasn't really all that new when Cheryl patented it but what do you think
sound off in the comments below we'll come back to the patents of it all when we talk about mit's
propellers so definitely you don't want to miss that now I know a lot of you guys don't live
under the water you don't own a boat you don't go boating on the weekends so you might be thinking
what does all this have to do with me well it turns out a lot actually not just you but everyone
the reason is simple these propellers have the potential to revolutionize the shipping industry
according to the United Nations conference on trade and development ocean shipping accounts
for 80 percent of World Trade and everything related to shipping has an important impact on
things like inflation food availability and the international supply chain we made a recent video
about the race for the Arctic where we covered how opening a sea route from the Atlantic to the
Pacific Oceans through the Arctic Ocean could cut distances from Asia to Europe and the U.S by as
much as 45 percent and reduce shipping times from 30 to just 18 days so if you haven't watched that
video check it out next pretty interesting stuff now suppose we outfitted those cargo
ships with these new propellers they'd have to be bigger of course but these propellers offer the
chance to cut down those costs even further fuel costs represent 50 to 60 percent of the shipping
industry's total operational cost increasing fuel efficiency then by close to 50 percent would cut
the total shipping cost by around 25 to 30 sent shipping times would also be reduced both because
of increased speed and increased total range with fewer stops along the way finally a boost
in efficiency like these are exactly the type of progress we need to Electrify the shipping
industry getting 30 to 50 more work out of the same electric motor would reduce the required
energy storage capacity needed which means less batteries and this would all come from a simple
swap-on replacement no new hardware infrastructure or anything else that's the part about this story
that I think is the most fascinating so that's how Toronto propellers can be a game changer for
Boat and Marine applications but what about other fluids like air in sharo's patents he states that
their propeller design could work on all sorts of applications from boats to Subs to pumps to
Turbo fans and even propellers for drones and other aircraft however this design is far from
optimal for most of those applications this is moving through the air is very different from
moving through water that's where the recently unveiled propeller design from MIT comes in
according to one of their authors the idea came from looking at a way to make propellers quieter
in their research they came across a ring-shaped wing that doesn't produce any tip vortices because
well it doesn't have any wingtips these vortices cause the loss of thrust and they're responsible
for much of the high-pitched noise associated with traditional propeller blades on drones and
other unmanned aircraft so they had the idea to twist the ring-shaped wing into a sort of
loop they call the toroidal propeller so kind of a similar design to sharo right yeah however
in this case the propeller is 3D printed out of plastic not stainless steel thanks to this design
the folks at MIT managed to produce a propeller that is significantly quieter than the three blade
propellers commonly used on drones today tests showed that the Toronto propeller significantly
reduces noise in the one to five kilohertz range which is where the high pitched buzzing sound you
typically associate with drones comes from consequently these propellers have a deeper
less annoying sound coming out of them at the same RP p.m noise reduction was the main goal for the
team at MIT and everything points to success on that front however this wasn't the only advantage
that these props possess according to MIT these props also produce more thrust though they don't
State exactly how much more because of the rise of personal drones like we have and a lot of
YouTubers have people have started to 3D print and try out their own variations and let's just say
that the results have been all over the map but I personally believe that there's a good explanation
Behind These mixed results the main reason is the design itself I mean actual CAD design with
the correct dimensions and propeller profile not easy if you see any of the many YouTube videos out
there where they make these props you'll notice a constant factor which is that most designs are
simply circles extruded at an angle and joined on one end this will of course give you a design that
looks very similar to mit's design but when it comes to aerodynamics especially at high
speeds like the ones of a drone propeller the devils and the details we don't know how many
iterations the team and I'm MIT went through to reach their final design but I'm willing to bet
it was a lot more than what the DIY crowd managed to pull off especially considering that they have
access to high level computation and simulation computers to be able to try out every little
pitch and angle and perfect their design if you don't believe me consider that there is a reason
why Cheryl's top of the line propellers require High Precision six axis CNC milling machines to
get the shapes and the Finish just right and each propeller is optimized for each actual particular
type of motor so it's not as simple to make or to just swap out you need the blades to be perfectly
balanced you don't have high vibrations while in operation at high RPM typically 3D printing
won't produce a well-balanced propeller every time and you might have to add counterweights
or sand and do some final touches to get a good balanced design and finally there is a material
Choice the importance of 3D printed materials can't be understated Johnny from Willett mod
proved this quite effectively when he compared the results of a standard pla printed Turtle propeller
with a copper silk pla version which was more flexible so I think the fact that John and others
have managed to get good results with sub-optimal designs is really a measure of how promising this
potential could be they could potentially power turboprop airplanes as well as Choppers and other
vital airships like air taxis and cargo drones this is where I think the most impact will be
the propellers are quieter but they're not quite enough for them to be undetectable by any means
so apart from making the Drone fly experience more enjoyable for Pilots the noise reduction will be
a much welcome addition to cities all around especially as the number of drones in the air
are probably going to start to be on the rise but all that aside what I love most about this
Toronto propeller is that it represents a step change in technology that has seen very little
progress over the years and it doesn't involve a complete infrastructure overhaul right it's not
like going from a gas car to an electric car that is a massive shift this is much simpler
if we were able to innovate propellers something that's been stagnant for years there's no telling
what other advances in mechanical engineering and design await us in the future especially with the
rise of 3D printing rapid prototyping simulations being able to do a thousand different flights and
optimized designs so quickly that combination of factors was never possible in engineering until
now and it's going to leave some pretty epic stuff all right so if you like this video check out
this one next I think you're going to also like until next week I'm Ricky thank you for watching