The capstone of my high school engineering class was a design project. In teams, we were responsible for designing and building a project, but it could be anything we liked. There were several catapults and trebuchets, a go-kart, and in the case of my team, a wind turbine. As can be seen in the photo above, my friend and I designed and prototyped many different designs before choosing one.
Our first challenge was to turn a microphone stand into a support structure. For our initial plan to create a horizontal axis wind turbine, this support consisted of PVC pipes and an elbow. A small dc-motor was then mounted inside of the pipe to generate power from the rotation of a central hub. We made two different types of blades, flat balsa wood blades, and curved pvc blades. Neither provided a fast enough rotational velocity to generate enough power without gearing, so we settled on a vertical-axis design that would allow us to use a smaller radius turbine.
Our first challenge was to turn a microphone stand into a support structure. For our initial plan to create a horizontal axis wind turbine, this support consisted of PVC pipes and an elbow. A small dc-motor was then mounted inside of the pipe to generate power from the rotation of a central hub. We made two different types of blades, flat balsa wood blades, and curved pvc blades. Neither provided a fast enough rotational velocity to generate enough power without gearing, so we settled on a vertical-axis design that would allow us to use a smaller radius turbine.
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