WInd Turbine PRoject:
Conceptual MOdel:
- Problem: Civilization has collapsed and you need power, build a Wind Turbine in order to power your town
- Generate Ideas: Pin Wheel, Traditional 3 bladed fan, and a VAWT (vertical access wind turbine) flipped vertically
- Constraints: 3 24" balsa wood sticks, use hot glue gun to hold turbine together, and about 7 days to finish in class
- Criteria: Amount of recycled material, area of blades, effectiveness, blade speed, number of blades
- Research: Empirical Research: on websites we found that standard shapes of turbines were the VAWTs and the 3 blade fan look, because of this were confirmed that we would would follow up with these designs. The website address: http://web.archive.org/web/20100923194211/http://www.awea.org/faq/wwt_basics.html Empirical Research: we ended up creating a rough draft of the pin wheel so we could test the speed of the turbine, we used this data into the Idea Matrix
- Solution: We ended up sticking with the original ideas with the Pin Wheel and 3 blade working by facing forward to the fan.The VAWT in contrast would be facing the fan from its side to pick up air.
- Idea Matrix:
- Summary: In conclusion based on the pin wheel winning the Idea Matrix, we gave the go ahead to go into creating the turbine. This design lasted very short however to failure of the pin wheel to create energy; so we went to our number two design to create the VAWT
Graphical Model:
Technical Sketch:
Shown in the graph, there is an increase in power output the taller the turbine. After seeing this data, we adjusted our design from a soda can stand, to a taller cardboard stand. This change increased our power output from .1 volts to .15 volts.
working model:
We first tested our turbine with it on a soda can, the energy generated would come out to be about .1. After using the mathematical model, we put our turbine on the cardboard stand for greater height, this increased the energy produced to .16. At a horizontal position, the model was only generating .16 but when rotating it to a slightly tilted vertical angle the energy generating was able to go up to .2. If our group would have been able to make other changes to our turbines, I we that we should have used different material such as plastic to create our turbines.