Wind Turbine Blades- Our Progression

As you may have read about in my recent blog, we are currently working on wind turbine blades in engineering class. My groups consists of two guys named Tanzim and Alex. We decided to create our wind turbine blades out of plastic cardboard because it's lightweight and sufficient. We decided to start off with a simple design of a width of 8 cm and a length of 20 cm. We created a rectangular blade and are currently still testing because we created various prototypes for out first prototype because we only had minor changes. (We had a prototype 1a and 1b.) It had taken us a while to complete our first prototype because it took us a while to consider each of our ideas. We've completed our first prototype and are moving on to testing. We haven't gotten too far ahead of what we initially thought we would have done by now. However, we're steadily moving further into the designing process. We're taking our time and being careful because one mistake could completely throw off our entire design. Below you will see pictures of one of our recent prototype, prototype b.

Wind Turbine Blade Design!

Temperatures are increasing rapidly, in fact we've barely had a snow day this year. Global warming is worsening and flooding and tropical storms are becoming more likely here in the U.S. Wind turbines are one of the options we've resorted to in order to help the environment. Wind turbines use wind energy to create electricity in an efficient, environmental way. In engineering class for this unit we're working on creating the most competent wind turbine blade. I believe my design of two blades made out of plastic cardboard will meet the objectives of this design, which is to produce electricity using wind in the most elegant and efficient way. I decided to use a bulged blade with a rounded top because when I thought of a wind turbine blade, I thought of a fan and the fact that they're somewhat similar and a fans blade is bulged with a rounded top. For the material I decided to use plastic cardboard, seeing as it is durable and lightweight, which will spin faster because it won't need as much wind speed to function as a heavier blade. I decided to use two blades because I believe having more blades would just create drag. I decided to use a horizontal orientation because it has a multidirectional capability and functions regardless of wind direction. Overall, I believe these decisions for my blade design will create the best functional wind turbine.