Fan

September 14, 2011

In movies and video games, ductwork seems to exist for the sole purpose of moving people through a building. In reality, it is used to move air. When a system is running, air is moving through it. If you are going to actually travel through a duct, you want to take this into account.

Engineers think of air velocity in ductwork in terms of feet per minute (FPM). A normal speed is 1000 FPM, but high velocity systems can run at 5000 FPM or higher. Converting to miles per hour, that is 11.3 MPH in most ductwork and 56 MPH in high velocity systems. These speeds would make travel through the ductwork difficult, but probably are not high enough to actually uncontrollably pull you. The ninja must have stumbled into a veryhigh velocity system.

When fan blades are exposed, there is often a guard screen to protect against large objects from entering the fan. Unfortunately for the ninja, this fan does not have that safety feature.

For the engineers in the audience, this fan lacks some critical details, such as bearing supports, but we doubt the ninja was thinking about that as he went through it.

Mark Robison, PE

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