Wind Turbine
The goal of this project was to generate electricity using wind energy. Our turbine was made by modifying an AC brushless motor to house neodymium magnets in the core. This was done by drilling out four holes in the core and adding the magnets -flipping polarization around the core. JB weld was used to secure the magnets. After drying, the center was ground to a flush surface. Our design called for a 3 blade system. Blades were constructed out of PVC pipe using a bandsaw. Smoothing of the fins was done using an electric sander. The center mount was designed using 3D CAD tools. It provided mounting holes for the generator and wing security bolts. This model was made using a CNC router to cut the aluminum plate. The results of this project was a wind turbine that could generate enough power to replace two AA batteries. I was pretty disappointed at how little power we were able to get out of the machine. This was due to the lack of accuracy and speed the turbine gained. Note the picture with the multimeter I have it measuring DC volts and took the picture at a maximum. In actuality, the output of the wind turbine will be an AC signal a frequency related to the generators spin rate. I could not pick up an AC signal from this cheap multimeter. For the next revision of this, I would like to get more powerful magnets and a gearbox to step up the rpm sent to the generator. Breaks would also be a necessity as a lot of momentum is generated when the wind blows and it could easily become unstable due to wing imbalance. I would like to add an accelerometer chip to identify when breaking is needed before the system destroys itself. I will also spend more time balancing the wings. |
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