Cooling Fan: Toroidal vs Normal 

Check out my other toroidal experiments in this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-A_V3tQ8zZ4s.html

Dude, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I studied this type of thing for a few months to build a homemade wind turbine, and this is much more complicated than just printing the propeller. I don't want to write a long text, but I recommend you research the blades of wind power plants to understand what I'm talking about (angles, degrees, stiffness, thickness) it's incredible how even a little dirt on a blade can ruin all harmony and balancing, and generate noise. A tip: remove the protective cage during the tests, as it creates turbulence, and also try to get data on the noise that the engine generates to be able to have accurate information only about the propellers.

The noise from the toroidal fan was a very soothing white noise. Now you have me thinking about replacing my go-to-sleep fan.

Your rotor is not balanced

The video is 10 months ago but I'm seeing so many new comments, algorithm is blessing this guy

If you remove the safety cage you will get a very noticable sound reduction, as it generates a lot of annoying tones from turbulence. Obviously though, don't do this with kids or pets around.

The noise from the toroidal blade was deeper and quite soothing I thought. Happy to have it on at night while sleeping. Nice video.

An additional consideration about your father's perception of the noise level. He is older (but younger than I am) and probably has more hearing loss compared to someone younger. Hearing loss typically is in the high frequencies. It seemed to me that your spectrum plots showed a greater reduction in the high frequencies for the toroidal fan measurements. The difference between the two fans would seem to be less for someone with higher frequency hearing loss because the relative perceived level of the high frequency content would be lower than the mid and low frequencies heard.

Dude, your toroidal fan is made with so soft material, make it from little sturdy material, I bet the looseness of material is making sound not the shape. Try different material or thick wall to avoid flexibility, even when you touched it with hand it feels like a jellybean.

Even though the results were the same, I feel that the standard fan had more of an annoying hiss and preferred the toroidal fan. I really enjoyed this video and your professional scientific method. The only thing missing is a cat :) I'm impressed with your command of English (but maybe it is your first language).Thanks for this video!

Nice, thanks! I've watched two dozen videos from different sources since the MIT paper came out. For me, yours most clearly and impressively showed (made audible) the difference between the two fan types. Same windpower, same power intake, same loudness level, but very much nicer frequencies. Thanks again!

I have same fan, smoothed prop blade leading and trailing edges, took rear and front mesh guards off and huge improvement. About a 30 min job. (Watch your fingers, keep kids away)

Toroidal's HF is desirable for me. Thanks from Colorado, nice project, video, test procedure, blind AB testing, script, audio and editing.

Repeating those tests on 'bare' blades, no front (and even no back) cover may eliminate noise from air hitting mesh. Sharpness of mesh (and poor finish) could contribute to the noise level. Great job anyhow 👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍

You sir are answering questions that I have asked and never done the work. Thank you So Much!!

I like your work. Now I want a Toroidal fan for myself. I preferred the frequency of the noise form the toroidal fan vs the standard. the toroidal fan frequency was more calming than the higher frequency from the normal fan

To think and try it out! You are truly a great engineer, kro up the great work

Nice project, this has a potential to go viral, especially with the great looking thumbnail :)

I appreciate that you're using professional equipment. Thank you for doing the science. I prefer the low hum of toroidal, gonna try to print my own.

The toroidal definitely sounded less "aggressive". I also just remembered that Zipline made some weird asymetric fans to drastically reduce the noise of their drones. Now I wonder if a similar although likely less drastic effect could be achieved, if you go with a 4 "blade" toroidal design but make slight changed between the 2 "blade" pairs. Like giving one pair more pitch and the other a little less or making on pair's "rim" go more outwards and the other's more inwards, so the blade rings aren't completely circular, but slightly oval, with one pair being oval outwards and the other "sideways".

It's still more professional than some "professionals", nice going

Basically, the toroidal and original produced the same sound frequency pattern. Judging by the graphs you showed, and considering their evolution over time, the pattern of frequencies and their volumes remains relatively constant around a certain range in vertical axis. If you inspect the range for each frequency and take the average of the values in that range in Y, for every point in X by separate, you make a Average_volume-Frequency graph, which seems to be the function over which the graph "fluctuates". By comparing both graphs from the two fans, and assuming the scaling in X and Y is the same for both, then we can conclude basically both have: * The same averageVolume-Frequency graph * They both have the same volume * The dispersion made by the toroidal has a standard deviation smaller than the original one. So yes, for every single frequency, the toroidal fan makes less sound as it's standard devation of volume over time is smaller than the standard deviation of the original one. This has the result of having a more "smooth" sound (as it doesnt vary too much from the mean) and slightly "quieter" (as it has ≈ mean but smaller deviation; this is, for a certain frequency, the maximum dB or volume archieve by the toroidal is always smaller than the maximum volume archieved by the original). So yes, it's good and I think your model is better. However, it would be wise first to test wether the toroidal is secure, stable and cheaper to produce.

The video production is superior! I love your content happy new year!

Really appreciate the measurements at different processing stages! Well done.

But the brown noise is so calming 😭

I appreciate the honesty and diligence. Well done.

So funny, love the humor. The expression about it not be perfect is new to me. I laughed. Your dad in the chair I laughed. I also learned about the point you made. Thank you for posting.

I like the experimentation, time well invested mate. keep it up

Great video, very interesting results.

Thank you for sharing I enjoyed the deeper frequency of the toroidal fan alot

So what, I have to find a toroidal box fan now? It sounded so goood. Fascinating! Love the thoroughness of tests.

That was a great experiment buddy !

Interesting test. Since I found out that they exist, I was interested in trying them. More since I read about its "benefits", but in practice, after seeing several reviews, I don't see those benefits, at least in air applications. Although according to other publications that I saw, the best test scenario is water, in aquatic vehicles it improves engine performance and reduces turbulence. Excellent work, I congratulate you. Greetings from Argentina.

This was a very well executed, detailed project👍🏻👌🏼

Straight to the point, good video

the toroidal fan is quieter also is somewhat less dangerous than extended sharp regular blades.

Good job... respect your efforts to test these. 😎🇦🇺

nice idea and tests :) I'm also sensitive to noise and was trying to come up with some quiet cooling for summer time awhile ago. I ended up creating and placing a table fan just in front of me - I used noctua S12A model - it's small but can do some pleasant cooling from such distance, and it can be dead quiet (it's one of the best performance/loudness fans you can buy) I typically use it at around 60% power (60% pwm duty to say exactly)

I honestly love the futuristic look of toroidal fans. Indifferent conclusions aside, I wish more fan manufacturers made this type of fan on their newer models.

So far, I've not had a fan that was too loud. The drone in the background actually provides a nice soothing white noise, even for conventional propellers.

I didn't know I need to know this, but apparently I do. Great comparison.

Good research lad, you are going to get smarter and produce genius stuff, keep the learning curve active!

“ it’s professional I promise “ 😊 love your personality 🤙🏽

I know you didn't intend for this to be an analog harshnoise demo but, at around 2:20, you nailed it! 😄😄👍🏼

That high frequency roll off made the toroid blade sound more soothing and less annoying.

Thanks for this video, great work, it's not perfect but it's more than you think, thanks again and keep going! Cheers from South america!

This is the first video that I’ve seen of yours and you are doing an outstanding job! Love it! Subscribed 🔥🔥🔥

THANK YOU for doing the power comparison. It's sort of a lurking variable and I wasn't expecting it to be addressed.

I recently found you. That was awsome. thanks

Did you consider testing without the protection metal frame? I have a feeling that most of noise is produced by the air hitting this structure.

🤘🏼 Cool experiment! By the way, ceiling fans are not noisy (because the horizontal operation balances the blades) and they also circulate air much more efficiently.

Personal experience (after years using different brands of desk fans) : old KDK fan blades have lower noise because they are flatter with wider blades, angle and curvature of the blades are important for lower noise and air speed and you need to find the balance between both factors, last thing ball bearings make a more power efficient fan than sleeve bearings, use graphite lubricant for better results.

Nice looking print!

Great job. Very interesting topic, but as a fellow tinkering enthusiast I have a couple of questions and suggestions. Firstly, why not ABS? It would be much easier to post process with an aceton fume treatment. Furthermore it would be much more rigid because your propeller looks way to wobbly. It means it could deform under lead in an undesirable way a ruin your rssults. Going further, a but more mass to the propeller could help too. Firstly, to balance it by removing some material, seconldly by negating vibrations from the motor and the swing mechanism if the fan. Additionally look different ways aviation industry combats stream dekamination. It nay help too. If I remember correctly, sometimes they use dents or grooves on rotary blades or wings to help with it. Lastly, Keep on with it! Great project. Hope to see pt 2 😊

I think a lot of the difference is about the pitch of the sound it makes. As people get older, the audible pitch level of what they cam hear changes (decreases I think), so you should use different test subjects with different age ranges and see what the results are

KEEP DOING THIS TYP OF WORK

So now we know. Thanks for your hard work! 😀

Your video production and presentation are getting better and better, it's good to see more of your personality and a more jovial approach. This one was too short though, we need more ! 🙂

You covered your Dad's ears and asking him which one sounds more noisy. But its nice fun experiment. I like experiments that have fun aspect to it. Subscribed👍

I always wondered if you could apply the designs from 'The Fan Showdown' to a cooling fan. I'd be interested if the measurements would remain proportional or if it would change when applied to such a large and 'slow' moving fan.

Great work! The small differences in the test results suggests other factors are so important the fan design have little overall influence. The air speed should have been measured without you or anything else inconsistent even behind the meter, and the meter should have a stand. I'm not saying the way you did it introduced significant error, just that it is a possibility. The actual efficiency is not the same, and the power draw is unlikely to be exactly the same unless the fan regulates that to control speed. It's possible that power meter can't measure anything but pure resistive loads very accurately. I recommend running each fan for some time and compare temperature of the motor and shaft. I done some experimenting myself, and found that inefficient blade designs made the motor and shaft significantly warmer, even with very small differences in power draw. While those cages probably are cheap to produce, I suspect it was the main reason to why there were so little difference between very different fan designs. When I experimented I actually needed to replace my old fan, and I landed on a design with just two slim straight blades, and ditching the cage. Very low noise, very high airflow, without the cage. It actually takes a couple of seconds or so for it to build up the air flow around it that it needs to perform well. With the cage the slim two bladed fan is even worse than the original fan with the cage.

Kudos to anyone who can read that disclaimer in the middle without pausing!!

Cool this has to be in all fans, including in the Macs. God bless.

Awesome video! Wish i could afford to shovel money at you. Big up your dad too for his honest assessment. Do you think te results had anything to do with the relatively flat profile of the propeller? Other toroidal propellers I've seen online appear to be a bit "deeper".

Слабо понимаю английский, но вижу отлично проделанную научную работу по испытаниям и с хорошей подачей материала. Продолжай свои работы в любом направлении. Тебя интересно слушать и смотреть.

The toroidal does indeed produce less high-frequency sounds, which carry the most energy and thus have the most potential for aggravating hearing-loss when exposed to them for long periods of time.

I give you credit for doing this. I still like the sound of the original, but I also wear headphones and like the white noise to block others out :) Maybe I am just more used to that sound.

"If there is a problem can we fix it with a toroidal fan?" This is the solution to all relationship problems.

amazing study! thanks for sharing

Be carreful! You can't get performance due to the imbalance from production. simply get the balance after production. Differention will be came with balance!

If you want more air speed, you need to maybe make the blade pitch more aggressive. I don't know what it would be, and I imagine there is a point of diminishing returns (a 90 pitch would be useless). Also, more blades should lower the noise, and I think increase air flow as well. I just stumbled on your video this morning. Great delivery style, subscribed!

Pretty cool man

At the tip of the toroidal blade, what would happen if holes were drilled to let the air escape the cupping of the air? Would this allow the blade to speed up with less resistance?

Amazing work.

Amazing...what if u had more edges than what you currently have for the Toroidal fan? Will it improve the air performance?

Nice work, I like more the sound of the toroidal propeller. Try playing with the size of the toroidal propeller, for example make the diameter smaller or make the toroidal propeller more or less dense.

Excellent ❤

Toroidal fans mostly help with reducing high-pitched noise from vortexes at the blades' outer edges. The remainder of high-pitched noise is likely caused by the fan guard turbulence as others have already mentioned.

Some noise is caused by the safety shrouds located for and aft of the blades, that saftey feature also reduces airflow. Building an enclosure with fewer restrictions, (but further away so that people still can't get hurt would increase airflow and decrease noise levels.

Good work! Personally I like the lower tone of the toroidal blades, and would swap my Rowenta fan's default blade with one if it was affordable to do so.

can easily fall asleep to both of those. God I need a new fan lol

hız teknelerinin pervanelerinde büyük fark görmüştüm ama vantilatörlerde çok azmış farkı. güzel video için teşekkürler 👍🏼

"It ain't perfect but its honest work" we going to mars with this one

It's not professional but it's honest work I love it

okay i just watch 1 youtube short about fan exploding, and youtube be like here another fan video, now I'm in fan universe

About the noise have you tried make blades of more volume (in shape of a water drop) with wider round intake side and sharp thin outtake?

I like the lower pitch of the toroidal sound

There were two many uncontrollable variables in this experiment. The fact you've got it not worse then what was offered by a manufacturer is already amazing

Great content. I would say that a precisely optomised toroidal geometry would be necessary to eek out the potential 15% benefit that has been observed in other use cases.

Hello, it seems like an interesting idea. I like it a lot. But how much does it really affect the air volume transfer? And it certainly consumes more energy, isn't it?

The sound of the Toroidal blades sounded better to me. Definitely could use the noise (hum) from those blades to relax and fall asleep.

What would be the optimal toroidal propeller and how would that perform?🤔

Keep going!

You are highly admired

The difference I heard form the toroidal fan is that it does shift the noise tones to the lower pitches. Although it may not have decreased the loudness, it is a bit smoother and easier on the ears.

consider adding more concentric blades to toroidal blade? will it do any good?

👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 Very professional.

You are going to have a long, successful life. Good luck and only the best.

I love that every time I see toroidal fans, propellers, or whatever come up, the result is always, "they were only very slightly better," or "slightly worse".

How much of the sound is from the air going through the metal surround?