How do I build the stuff I think of?

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cosmictraveler said:
The Darrieus wind turbine is a type of wind turbine used to generate electricity from the energy carried in the wind. The turbine consists of a number of aerofoils vertically mounted on a rotating shaft or framework. This design of wind turbine was patented by Georges Jean Marie Darrieus, a French aeronautical engineer, in 1931.

Unlike the more common type of generator which uses a propeller, the Darrieus generator rotates around the vertical axis rather than the horizontal one, and is thus referred to as a vertical-axis wind turbine or VAWT. Conventional propeller-based systems are known as a horizontal-axis wind turbine, or HAWT, although typically only when referring to VAWTs. The vertical arrangement has several advantages, notably the generator can be placed at the ground for easy servicing, and the main supporting tower can be much lighter as much of the force on the tower is transmitted to the bottom.

The Darrieus type is theoretically just as efficient as the propeller type if wind speed is constant, but in practice this efficiency is rarely realised due to the physical stresses and limitations imposed by a practical design and wind speed variation. There are also major problems to protect Darreus turbine in extreme wind speeds and make is self-starting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrieus_wind_turbine
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Cool thanks for the info.

I have another design. I think it will be better but I haven't tested it or do I have the money to build the wind generator. :shrug:
 
makezine.com/blog - huge database of things and how to create them, also techniques to make whatever you want. (Carbon Fiber and Fiberglass are both in there) hope that helps future endeavors.
 
Write some letters to small businesses and start-ups.

Carbon fiber is expensive, but mechanically the best option.

Glass fiber is slightly weaker, but very cost-effective. Which is why many of the large multi-MW generators are made from this stuff. Actually it should be possible to design a turbine blade from 70xx series aluminum, but you might want to check if it's really possible.

Also, as a sidenote, you want to be really careful when designing something out of composites. There are many unexpected properties that can arise from certain laminate configurations.
 
Agreed, I work with the stuff routinely at my university, glass fabric can go wrong in lots of different ways when you mold it. First of all, if you're using fabric, it's delicate as hell, and you can ruin a good piece by just snagging it with a hang-nail. Then, you need to find a way to mold complex shapes with it while making it as smooth as you need, usually this involves a computer-routed mold made of foam. You'd need to not only have a design for this but some way of having that design made into foam, either by building a CNC cutting device or having someone who has such a device do your dirty work for you and ship you the finished molds. Oh, and the epoxy can be expensive and messy as hell, ugh...

It's messy, but it's kinda fun in the end. We make composite parts for small competition aircraft, and it's pretty cool to build stuff this way, albeit messy and expensive.
 
yeah I gotta say carbon fiber is the way to go, my lab partners manufactured the shape using carbon fiber and it holds strong and light.
 
Well, we've got two sayings in our shop...

"Just needs more carbon!"

and...

"The carbon god is a false god!"

So many people get a hard-on for carbon fiber and forget that the stuff is really only good for one use... tension reinforcement. Making a part out of pure carbon fiber ONLY works correctly if you've aligned the fibers correctly. We see planes at competitions made entierly out of carbon fiber and they don't weigh any less than our plane. In fact, ours end up lighter, and we'll build with traditional wood methods, but we use carbon fiber and kevlar in strategic locations that let us cut back on how much wood we need, and thus save tons of weight on our plane designs.

Unfortunately, we've got the purist wood people, the guys who get off on carbon fiber, and the ones who like to mix it on our team, so we get into lots of little spats like this :p
 
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