The companies that compose The Pax Group are direct offshoots of PAX Scientific, Inc., a California-based research and development corporation focused on proprietary technologies involving but not limited to fluid dynamics, convection, flow forms, propulsion, and thermodynamics. PAX Scientific’s technology applies specific geometries found in nature, with primary focus on vortical flows and deterministic chaos theory, to industrial processes. Industrial processes create friction at all levels of production, which creates heat, cavitation, loss of energy, and waste. PAX Scientific adapts and modifies fans, pumps, impellers, turbines, tubing, ducts, and other industrial tools and processes. These designs provide significant improvements in output as well as reduction of noise, cavitation, and shear stresses in fluid- and heat-handling applications.
Historically, the technology employed to move liquids and gases — fans, propellers, and pumps — has been designed under the assumption that the path of least resistance is a straight line. This thinking evolved into the paddle wheels and early impellers used to capture energy or pump water. However, fluids in natural systems rarely move in a straight line, but instead in a particular swirling pathway. Attempts to move gases or fluids linearly result in increased friction, backpressure, reverse heat gain, and in the case of liquids, cavitation. Nature, unimpeded, is extraordinarily efficient.
PAX Scientific founder Jay Harman has been conducting theoretical and field research in hydrobionics — the science of natural fluid flow—for nearly 30 years. Harman is an avid naturalist who served twelve years with the Australian Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, logging thousands of hours studying the flow patterns of ocean and air currents. After repeatedly observing the effectiveness of natural fluid systems, Harman asked a fundamental question: “Is there a way to design equipment that duplicates nature’s efficiency?”
The breakthrough came with the identification of recurring principles of mathematics in nature. While philosophers and scientists have observed the geometric patterns of swirling kelp, nautilus, and whelks for millennia, Harman envisaged a new approach, and began applying this streamlining geometry to practical design problems, filing numerous patents in the process. Of particular interest to fan manufacturers are those in which Jay Harman details a new type of fan blade and impeller using the PAX Principle.
Origin of Technology
Flow
Core Technology
Methodology
PaxFan is a direct offshoot of PAX Scientific, Inc., a California-based research and development corporation focused on proprietary technologies involving but not limited to fluid dynamics, convection, flow forms, propulsion, and thermodynamics. The firm applies geometries found in nature with primary focus on vortical flows and deterministic chaos theory. PAX Scientific’s core technology and patents involve the adaptation of the characteristics of Phi equilibrium vortical flows to industrial processes. Industrial processes create friction at all levels of production, which creates heat, cavitation, loss of energy, and waste. PAX Scientific adapts and modifies fans, pumps, impellers, turbines, tubing, ducts, and other industrial tools and processes. These designs provide significant improvements in output as well as reduction of noise, cavitation, and shear stresses in fluid- and heat-handling applications.
PAX Scientific holds or has filed many US and international patents on its inventions. No patent has been challenged, and no patent examiner has set forth any determination of prior art. PAX Scientific intends to become the global design standard for energy-efficient commercial, industrial, and consumer equipment within 20 years. It employs and works with a team of scientists, and intends to both replace the current industrial technology and production processes in all sectors, and extract a profit from every application of PAX design principles.
PAX Scientific founder Jay Harman has been conducting theoretical and field research in hydrobionics—the science of natural fluid flow—for nearly 30 years. Harman is an avid naturalist who served twelve years with the Australian Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, logging thousands of hours studying the flow patterns of ocean and air currents. After repeatedly observing the effectiveness of natural fluid systems, Harman asked a fundamental question:
“Is there a way to design equipment that duplicates nature’s efficiency?” The breakthrough came with the identification of recurring principles of mathematics in nature: logarithmic spirals, the Fibonacci sequence, and the Golden Ratio. While philosophers and scientists have observed the geometric patterns of swirling kelp, nautilus, and whelks for millennia, Harman began applying this streamlining geometry to practical design problems—envisaging a new approach, and filing numerous patents in the process. With the insights gained from his research, he designed the award-winning Goggleboat and WildThing boats, whose unique streamlined properties are similar to the underlying principles Harman has incorporated in PAX technology.
Air and water are always in motion. The manner in which gases and liquids move is known as flow, and the study of flow is called fluid mechanics. That term is somewhat of a misnomer—the flow of fluids is anything but mechanical. As with electricity, gravity, and certain other phenomena, science can describe liquid and gaseous flows but not actually explain them. Flow affects every business, living system, and industrial process. Every form of energy consumption and production is affected by fluid dynamics (half of all electricity consumed on the planet is used to pump liquids). And nowhere is flow more important than in transportation. Because the science and application of fluid flow have thus far been treated as mechanics, there is an opportunity for technology based on a deeper and more innovative understanding of fluid dynamics.
There are two basic types of flow—turbulent and laminar. There is no agreed-upon definition of the end-state, but the transition from laminar to turbulent flow is easily observed using water flowing from a faucet. At lower pressure and volume, water flows smoothly. When the pressure is increased, the flow is disturbed and becomes rough and opaque. When fluid is “turbulent,” the molecules are moving in varying paths and at different velocities, whereas laminar flow is described as fluid layers moving in parallel and ordered pathways.
To measure flow characteristics, an ingenious discovery was made in 1883 by Osborne Reynolds. By observing the flow of a colored liquid in thin glass tubes, he was able to determine a dimensionless parameter at which laminar flow would break down into turbulent flow. This parameter is now called the Reynolds number and is determined by a simple formula vd/µ where v = velocity, d = inner diameter of glass tube, and µ = kinematic viscosity of water. Kinematic viscosity is the measure of the resistance to flow of a fluid. When a Reynolds number up to 2300 is maintained, the flow condition is constant, regardless of the fluid or size of the tube. Reynolds numbers exceeding 2300 indicate turbulent flows.
Propellers, turbines, impellers and fans create turbulent flows at their effective rate of use. We can hear this turbulence in fans, jets, and HVAC (heating, ventilation, air conditioning) systems—and what we’re listening to is friction. In water or fluids, we see and hear turbulence in the form of irregular fluctuation or boiling motion, which is comprised of agitation, cavitation, erratic flows, and eddies. Fluid turbulence causes inefficiencies and increased energy use.
Historically, the technology employed to move liquids and gasesfans, propellers, and pumps—has been designed under the assumption that the path of least resistance is a straight line. This thinking evolved into the paddle wheels and early impellers used to capture energy or pump water. However, fluids in natural systems do not move in a straight line, but instead in a particular swirling pathway. Attempts to move gases or fluids linearly result in increased friction, backpressure, reverse heat gain, and in the case of liquids, cavitation. Nature, unimpeded, is more efficient than any industrial system.
After years of study, Jay Harman created a new type of fan blade and impeller (the rotating section that transmits motion in a centrifugal pump, turbine, or blower) using the PAX Principle. The design is based logarithmic spirals found everywhere in nature, from the cone-shaped vortices of tornadoes, to seashells and the recessive spirals seen in a draining bathtub. Rivers are comprised of two angular spiralic currents rotating in opposite directions, throwing off eddies and smaller vortices as they progress. The same holds true for air movement. Where there is turbulence or debris, the spiralic nature of airflows becomes evident, as in hurricanes, funnel clouds, or dust devils. Spiralic flow is found in airflow within the trachea, blood flow in the human cardiovascular system, and sap flow in plants. You see the logarithmic spiral in an astonishing array of species and forms in nature: sunflowers, seashells, the miniscule unicellular organisms foraminifera, and of course our solar system ’s galaxy, the Milky Way. The efficient flight patterns of birds and insects, and the economical swimming patterns of narwhales and dolphins, are all built on variations of naturally occurring equiangular spiralic flows.
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is the primary technology employed by PAX Scientific for modeling and engineering. All flow phenomena can be described by equations coupled with empirical laws governing viscosity and thermal conductivity. CFD starts with partial differential equations to describe fluid flow. The fluid flow dynamics being modeled are approximated and then solved iteratively on a computer. The method reduces the residual error to some minimum value where it is said to converge with the solution. The flow is computed for the given configuration, in this case turbulent air flowing into an automobile fan, and then the local values of viscosity and thermal entropy-generation rates are mapped. A designer can then detect by inspection the key areas that require geometry change. Subsequently modifications can be tested again, and the procedure repeated until a satisfactory result is achieved. The outcome is a spatial representation of the flow at various approximations: quasi three-dimensional, two-dimensional, and at a single dimension.
CFD modeling occurs in two stages. The first uses a minimal grid resolution in simulations to capture the overall performance of the design. In the second stage, high resolution and sophisticated turbulence models are used to accurately capture the details of the flow under both design and off-design conditions. Such simulations may require one million grid points or more and necessitate larger simulation models to get an accurate view of the turbulent fluctuations that take place in the flow being simulated. By using CFD, the number of prototypes that need to be built can be reduced by 80-90 percent, and the design cycle time is reduced by 50-75 percent. The software tools are able to model not just the physical performance of the design but can measure physical outcomes such as material deformation, surface shear stress, and noise output.
