[electricboats] Electric Hovercraft

Hello all,

I'm in the planning phase for my next EV project: an electric hovercraft! I will be retiring my electric powerboat to sell the hull and trailer while keeping all of my electric drive components. So I have all of the batteries, switches, fuses, chargers, etc for a 48V 200A marine system. I don't have a motor I can reuse, as my boat used an e-Propulsion Navy 6 electric outboard.

So, the main fixed component I'll be using is my Valence U27-12XP batteries (12V 130AH LiFePO4). I have ten of these, but for weight I'll only be using 4 on the hovercraft (136lbs). If I can get by with 36V or 24V, that's a savings of 34 lbs per battery.

The hovercraft I'm building is a UH-10F from Universal Hovercraft. Hundreds of these have been built over the decades, many by high schoolers. It is a very simple and proven design, with only the electric motor and battery additions being new. Plenty of youtube videos if you want to see a UH-10F in action.

I don't intend to race it, but the racing class requirements say no more than a 12.5hp / 9.3kW engine. So using that as a guideline, the 10kW sailboat kit from Thunderstruck looks pretty good! The thrust fan should spin at about 2400 rpm, which coincidentally is the max speed of the ME1115 in the kit. Instead of a smaller water propeller I'll be turning a 36" 6 blade ducted fan.

Questions:

1. Given how well all those numbers line up, do I just direct drive the fan? Or is there a benefit to stepping up or down the RPM?

2. If I go down to 24V to save the 68 lbs, would I then use a belt drive to step up the RPM back to 2400 rpm? Or should I choose a different motor in that case?

3. The basic design diverts 30% of the thrust air under the skirt for lift. The enhanced design (UH-10F2) uses a separate lift and drive fan. There's some advantages to that but plenty of commercial designs only use one fan. However, if I could use two motors at 24V instead of one big motor at 48V it might make sense. Any thoughts on which way to go there?

Thanks,

Brian

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