Design, Manufacturing and Testing of Inversed Taper NACA 4412 Airfoil with Blade Made of Hybrid Empty Fruit Bunch Bio-composites

Abstract

The continuous increase in electrical energy requirements as well as the decreasing amount of fossil fuels has led to the rapid development of studiesin the field of renewable energy, one of which is wind energy. Wind energy with wind turbine was chosen due to its commercial acceptability such as low cost, ease of operation, and maintenance along relatively much less time from concept to operation. One of the important components in a turbine is the blade, the function of the blade is to trap the wind which is then forwarded to the generator. Therefore, this study aims to design, manufacture, and test blades for inversed taper NACA 4412, using a composite Empty Fruit Bunch (EFB) fiber combined with fiberglass. The wind turbine wasplaced above building at a height of ±15m and the data taken were in the form of wind speed, air temperature, voltage, and shaft rotation speed. Data collection was carried out using Arduino Uno, which was recorded on the data logger for 4 days and at the maximum speed, the power obtained was48.2 Watt. Furthermore, the highest coefficient performance value obtained was 0.17 with a tip speed ratio value of 0.89 at a wind speed of 3.27 m/s.