Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

In my fifth semester, I and a team of two other mechanical engineering students designed, tested, and fabricated a cart-mounted vertical axis wind turbine to generate power when pushed at running speed.

Our design features three moveable blade elements. Each element self-adjusts to always maintain some angle-of-attack relative to the direction of the wind and maintain a more constant torque at low and inconsistent wind speeds.

To test our design prior to full-scale fabrication, we tested small-scale models in a wind tunnel. Using non-dimensional analysis we were able to predict the performance of the full-scale turbine and optimize the design to maximize power.

The resulting wind turbine generated an average of 5.9 W, with a peak power of approximately 10 W.