Wind turbine

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Cu455

Cu455

Fire Eel
MFK Member
Mar 8, 2011
1,089
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I need to build a homemade wind turbine. I would like some feedback and suggestion. The wind tunnel will be 4ftx4ft.

My plan is to use the wings of this foam plane as blades. I will try 2,3 and 4 blades.
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I planned on modeling it after the Tupolev plane propellers. Then I realize that it is hard and will take to much time to make a contra rotation blades. Talking about the plane will also be great for the presentation.
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Any suggestions building the wind turbine and the contra rotation blades? Will there be any advantage to setting up the blades off set but fixed?

To keep it fish relevent I plan on using this for my fish tanks if we get hit with another hurricane.
 
Silent Bob said:
How fast do you plan on spinning those foam wings? As for counter rotating blades I wouldn't waste your time on them.
Click to expand...

As fast as I can get them to go. The presentation part is an important part of the competition. I though it will be good to give a little history lesson about the design. If I hook two sets of blades parallel to each other but off set will it have any advantage? I can say that I tried the contra and it wasn't feasible so I tried two sets of blades behind each other.
 
I don't think you really gain anything from contra rotating blades on a wind turbine. If you want/need more blade area, just make the blade bigger...

A wind turbine that generates a real, usable amount of electricity, is fairly complicated and expensive, and typically you spend as much money on the tower as you do the generator.

The best DIY and cost effective turbine I've seen are the "Breezy" ones. http://www.prairieturbines.com/, but I don't know that they can be used off the grid... they're designed to be grid tied.
 
Thanks for the advice but the competition is over. My students wind turbine generated the most power but they got 2nd place overall. Their presentation wasn't that good. I think the prairie turbine or breezy is a little advanced for 8th graders. It also won't fit in the wind tunnel, it was only 4ftx4ft.

Here is their wind turbine.

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Wow, that was totally different than I was expecting. I didn't realize from the original post that this was a small model type of thing instead of a wind turbine designed to generate useful electricity.

Not sure what kind of fishtank that thing could power.... maybe a betta bowl?
 
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