Abstract
The objective of this work was to design and build a wind turbine which can be used to power small street lights. Considering the typical wind speeds in Abu Dhabi, UAE and ease of construction, the design of the wind turbine was chosen to be Sea Hawk design from vertical axis wind turbine category. A three phase AC generator was used for its availability over the DC motors within the region. A 12V battery was used for storage and a charge controller was used for controlling the charge flow into the battery and for controlling the turbine rotation when the battery is fully charged. The blades used in the turbine were made of foam board according to the NACA 0018 airfoil shape with a chord length of 15cm. The connecting shaft was made of stainless steel. Structural analysis and CFD analysis were performed along with other calculations. Testing was executed to calculate the voltage output from the turbine at different wind speeds. The maximum voltage the turbine produced at 6.4 m/s wind speed was 2.4Vand the rotational speed of the turbine was 60.3 rpm.
Highlights
Wind turbines typically are divided into two types based on their axis of rotation with respect to the wind flow direction; Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) and Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT)
The necessary approaches starting from literature review to find all the necessary background details required, collecting the wind data, selecting the appropriate turbine, blade type, determining the components required, calculating the power density, structural analysis, CFD analysis, building the prototype, till the testing of the turbine were performed
From the literature review it was found that VAWT works better due to the facts that the efficiency is better, works with lower wind speeds, cheaper, smaller, cheaper, and easier to manufacture
Summary
Wind turbines typically are divided into two types based on their axis of rotation with respect to the wind flow direction; Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine (HAWT) and Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT). The position of main rotor shaft and electrical generators in horizontal axis turbine is at the top of a tower provided that this must be pointed in the direction of wind. The gearbox combined with the high-speed shaft increases the rotation of about 30-60 rpm to almost 1200-1500rpm. This is the typical rotation speed required for generators used in HAWT [1]. Typical Darrieus wind turbine (different types shown in Fig. 1) contains 2 or 3 blades [3]
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