Turbine Blades

One of my first major design projects was designing efficient turbine blades using many designs and styles. The assessment considered how differing designs of turbine blades change the amount of electricity produced compared to is effiencey. All models were made using AutoCAD on FUSION 360 and printed at school.

a wind turbine with a blue sky in the background

Blade Designs

The blades progress in design

The 1st blade was a standard design and would act as a control variable and baseline. The design had a long, wide base and a smaller tip. The tip would also be centralised, having minimal curvature along the tip of the blade.

The 2nd design has a wider base and tip compared to Version 1. This would increase the surface area of the wing, supported by the added bending points, capturing more oncoming wind per revolution. Winglets were added to reduce the vortices the larger blade and tip design produced. By adding winglets, it increased the overall efficiency and laminar flow. This blade produced the most power above 40 W.

The new design created a new challenge, the structural design and material choice needed to be redesigned with a higher tensile strength material to sustain the increased force the blades could generate.

My final design deviated from Version 1 and 2 as it was based on schimitar blades found on certain aircraft propellers. It contains more points of bend on the blade, as well as the curvature of the blade. This blade designed allowed a use of more cost effective materials with slight reduction in power generated compared to Version 2, as it achived only 35 W. This design was selected as the final becuse it was the most efficient, cost effective and stable in design.