Weaponized Turbojet Afterburners in Battlebots

[battlebotsbaddy420]

Hey whatsup guys

So lets cut right to it, I come from a combat robotics background and have always been enthralled with the idea of literally melting a robot by using a grappler style bot and a turbojet engine with weaponized afterburner. I don't need thrust, just HEAT. What would be your largest worry with keeping the jet running in such a high impact environment? Battlebots can get thrown 10 feet in the air and come crashing to the ground or even get thrown clean across a 50ft arena. I personally would be most worried about the prop shaft bearings but I would love your opinions.

It's a terrible idea, it would not be competitive but it would almost certainly be the loudest, and by extensive, coolest showman robots to ever compete. 

[enginewhisperer]

I think the best bet would be an electric ducted fan with an afterburner.

Either way though, any sort of flame weapon is fairly ineffective against most robots. I've done a couple in the past and what I found was that in the limited time you have, you just can't get enough heat into things to do proper damage.
If you can get fire inside the other robot it can damage wiring, etc pretty quickly but even then it happens less than you'd expect.
What works well is to shoot burning liquid fuel - but it's against the rules

[jasonr]

You could run a small turbojet like I run on rc jets, I've seen a few with an afterburner fitted, they put out between 12lbs of thrust on up to about 85lbs. Like this ram 1000 that puts out 30lbs.

[battlebotsbaddy420]

Jan 14, 2020 17:03:13 GMT -5 enginewhisperer said:

I think the best bet would be an electric ducted fan with an afterburner.

Mechanically it would definitely be more sound but you NEED to have that big jet sound. 

[enginewhisperer]

and EDF or even a centrifugal blower (turbo compressor) on a high speed brushless motor makes a pretty good noise, and will be a lot more controllable.


I think an actual turbine engine is a very expensive item to put in this environment where it will have massive shock loads and probably suffer from FOD on its first run.

[racket]

Yep , I agree , the EDF is the easiest way to go for producing big flames

[jasonr]

I agree with you guys edf is cheaper and simpler, and if you don't need much thrust than this route is great. Be aware however that most edf's out there are carbon fiber or plastic injection molded units, I probably have 40 edf's in total from byron 6" edf all the way down to 1" edf running on 14s lipo diwn to 1s lipo. I have tried small afterburners like these guys from flite test made, plastic doesn't hold up well, there is metal edf's a couple that I have are lander, jp hobby and mercury that are aluminum. These units would hold up better. Here is the link that may help.

EDF Afterburner | Flite Test
www.flitetest.com/articles/edf-afterburner-2

[jasonr]

Here is a couple of examples of different sizes, a 6" byron edf, a 127mm dynamax and a cs 70mm edf.

[Richard OConnell]

As enginewhisperer said, its unfortunately against the rules to weaponized flammable fuels or intentionally dispurse liquids at officially sanctioned events. That being said, a little turbine engine would be cool as hell on a battle robot and if you can find any use for one I say go for it! Putting a little baby free turbine behind your turbine that drives an alternator to keep the bot charged up might be neat, but you'll need to understand just how thirsty that engine is going to be. Also, you'd be wise to prepare yourself for the likely event of spectacular failure.

Play safe