Wind Turbine Design
3D image of the wind turbine.
I designed and built a wind turbine for my senior design project at Tufts. The goal of the project was to design a wind turbine to charge a cellphone battery.
It was a group project and I did the following tasks:
- Designed blades for the first iteration of the turbine.
- Designed and built the control system.
- Designed the generator enclosure .
- Designed and fabricated a hub adapter.
The rest of the documentation can be found here.
Small circuit board I designed and fabricated for power conditioning. I describe the software here.
Results
After two unsuccessful designs, my team and I tested the final design (shown in the picture) in the wind tunnel. At a wind speed of 10m/s, blade speed was 5,600 rpm and power output was 7.3 W at 4.3 V. In the future, I want to work on developing a better control system.
Userful Links:
- Simulation software.
- MATLAB NACA profile generator.
- DC Motor Speed Modelling.
- DC Motor Characteristics: Torque and Power Curves.
- Q Blade Analysis Software.
- WT Perf Analysis Software. – I found this software to be easier to use than Q Blade.
- Using Photointerrupter with Arduino.
| Class project | Windturbine Design |
| Time line | Fall 2011 |
| Group Project |