Shopping cart wind turbine
Design Lab Project – University of Pennsylvania (2011)
Objective:
For a lab course project, teams of three were to design vertical-axis wind turbines that could be mounted in a shopping cart. The objective of the project was to compete with other groups in the goal to generate the most electricity when run down the length of a hallway, as measured by a microcontroller connected to the electrical generator.
Project Details:
For this project, I created and tested various scale models in a 12” wind tunnel before the final two-scoop Savonius design was selected. We chose the Savonius design over the Darrieus design because it is self-starting and easier to construct, especially on such a limited budget. The final turbine that we used in the competition was made entirely from laser-cut MDF, plastic sheeting, and duct tape. The most difficult part of the lab was to determine the optimal gear ratio to maximize total power output from the system, which involved making an aerodynamic model of the turbine and comparing its efficiency curve to that of the motor for the expected shopping cart running speed. The determined gear ratio was too high for a single pair of spur gears. Most groups in the class had this same issue, but I was the only one to design a compound gear set that allowed us to achieve the gear ratio we wanted without an intermediate gear axis.
Results
The competition day was a lot of fun. The whole class crammed into a narrow hallway to watch each team push their shopping cart turbine down the hall as fast as they could. Our turbine placed fourth against more
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