Project Description
For this project we are building the most effective wind turbine that we can. We started by doing a lot of background research on wind turbines and then we make our initial construction. We accomplished this by making a model turbine with the parts that we were given including, dowels, materials for blades, a model stand and a basic electric motor. We first worked to find out the number of blades that worked to turn the wind turbine the fastest. Then we worked to find out which was the best angle to turn the pieces of wood for propelling the wind turbine. We also tested out different shapes of blades as well as different materials like bulsa-wood, cardboard and styrofoam.
Blade Material Investigation
For our investigation of different blade materials, our group tested out multiple types of materials that we could’ve potentially used for our wind turbine. We tested out 3 kinds which were balsa-wood, cardboard, and styrofoam. We tested out the power of the wind turbine with each material as the blades. We then came to the conclusion based on the statistics we collected that the wind turbine model with balsa-wood as the blades produces the most power and styrofoam blades produce the least amount of power by a considerable margin. Cardboard blades produced a decent amount of power but not quite as much as balsa-wood. Our group also tested how flexible each material was and found that balsa-wood was the least flexible material, making it the most efficient. We got this information based on the flexion-distance that we measured for each material. In the end, our group came to the conclusion that balsa-wood is the best material to use for our wind turbine project.
Project Conclusions to Date
Throughout our investigation of different blade materials, number of blades, angle of the blades, and the size of the gear, we came to the conclution that four bulsa-wood blades at about 20 degrees with the biggest size gear worked the best. We tested out the power of the wind turbine with three blased and then four, using bulsa-wood. Then we tested each material using four blades for all three types. The data was collected by tracking the power in MATLAB by using the wires and Arduino Uno and connecting it to a computer.
