An analysis of the Brown-Biefeld effect

When a high voltage is applied on an asymmetric capacitor, it experiences a force acting toward its thinner electrode. This effect is called Brown-Biefeld effect (BB), after its discoverers Thomas-Townsend Brown and Paul-Alfred Biefeld. Many theories have been proposed to explain this effect, and many speculations can be found on the net suggesting the effect is an antigravitation or a space warp effect. However, in the recent years, more an more researchers attribute the BB effect to a unicharge ion wind. This work calculates the levitation force due to ion wind and presents experimental results which confirm the theoretical results.