E26 Wind Turbine Project
March 2018 to May 2018
Project Specifications
During my freshman year spring semester, I worked on a group project for my Engineering 26 class at UC Berkeley. For this project, we had to design and construct a model wind turbine. The four major tasks for this project were designing and fabricating the turbine's rotor blades, designing and fabricating the support tower and generator housing, determining the power output of our turbine, and determining the stiffness of our tower.
Design
Our rotor blades, support tower, and generator housing were 3D printed using ABS plastic. Before designing the blade, we conducted research on several factors that affect power generation and efficiency such as blade length, number of blades, blade shape, and blade pitch. From our research we learned that the optimal angle of attack for each blade is 9 degrees. The diameter of the swept area of the rotor will be 6 inches. Below is a picture of my group's Solidworks design of the rotor blades.
We also designed the tower (shown below) on Solidworks.
Testing
Our wind turbine was tested on May 1st. It was evaluated in the following two ways:
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Power Generation Test
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turbine will be connected to a electrical meter and a load box (potentiometer)
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blower will be used to produce wind speed of 25 mph
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Stiffness Test
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a string will be attached to the top of the turbine
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dial indicator will be used to measure deflection of tower
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My group's wind turbine performed exemplary on both tests. We wrote a project report to summarize the project and our results. Feel free to download and view it here:
Here is a video of my group testing the power generation of the turbine:
