Wind generator
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My dad has been playing with building his own windmill. But neither he nor I could come up with a clutch to slow the blades down in high winds. Everything we have found online is actually a form of a brake (which seems like it would heat up or fail). I drew this up as a concept for a centrifugal method of feathering the blades. Any input, before he starts to try and build something, would be nice.
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Impressive work! So it's meant to actually rotate the blades to flat position at high speeds? Looks like it is using a centripetal force which will force the two weights together at high speeds (which will rotate the blades). That's quite an impressive mechanism. A model could of been in more detail, but I tell you that's such an awesome concept.
I live up on a hill and I tell ya, there are winds of 50 mph. If only we could afford a wind generator, there would of been such much energy saving.
Seems you guys got it figured out quite well.
I'm not an engineer, but I'm pretty impressed with such mechanics.
Thanks for sharing.
Good luck! -
actually it forces them apart
. The spring forces them back together as it slows it's rpm. This way there is a constant rpm and not a run away... -
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An interesting concept but the engineering is not something I'm qualified to comment on.
Just a side note on your model itself.
A quick purge reduces it from more than 8mb to less than 2mb.
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A couple of things occur to me. Most importantly, as the two rings move to feather the blades won't the distance between the posts mounting the blades change? There doesn't seem to be any mechanism to allow this movement. Maybe pivot on one of the rods and have the other move in a slot?
On a more engineering note, what you have designed is a mechanical negative-feedback governor. As such, it will have a resonant frequency at which the blades alternately increase and then decrease their feathering. With a bit of luck, the mechanism will have enough friction to damp out this oscillation, but it is something to be wary of as an inadequately damped resonance will build up until it destroys the mechanism!
Steve
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@slbaumgartner said:
A couple of things occur to me. Most importantly, as the two rings move to feather the blades won't the distance between the posts mounting the blades change? There doesn't seem to be any mechanism to allow this movement. Maybe pivot on one of the rods and have the other move in a slot?
On a more engineering note, what you have designed is a mechanical negative-feedback governor. As such, it will have a resonant frequency at which the blades alternately increase and then decrease their feathering. With a bit of luck, the mechanism will have enough friction to damp out this oscillation, but it is something to be wary of as an inadequately damped resonance will build up until it destroys the mechanism!
Steve
The four tabs holding the rings together have bearings (to control alignment)and springs (to allow the rings to spread apart as the veins rotate). I was hoping that the tension of the return spring and the pressure of the four ring springs would dampen any vibration, but that was what I was HOPEING lol. This is a proto type. I don't know of anything like it to try and copy!
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@unknownuser said:
But neither he nor I could come up with a clutch to slow the blades down in high winds
Don't know if possible, but another approach could be changing the angles of the blades in the wind direction ? Like an umbrella ? That could ease the force of the wind.
Sort of lika a PAX fan closing. Could be problematic if winds changes irradically.
http://www.pax.se/en/product/accessories-fans/passad-backdraught-shutter -
@jolran said:
@unknownuser said:
But neither he nor I could come up with a clutch to slow the blades down in high winds
Don't know if possible, but another approach could be changing the angles of the blades in the wind direction ? Like an umbrella ? That could ease the force of the wind.
Sort of lika a PAX fan closing. Could be problematic if winds changes irradically.
http://www.pax.se/en/product/accessories-fans/passad-backdraught-shutterI though it would just unrotate the blades so the wind doesn't has much surface area to act on. But it looks like these 2 masses at centre were made for different purpose
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Yeah, probably. But I thought the question was how to slow down the RPM in strong winds..
Anyway, if the station is rotatable/hinged, when folded the blades would act as parachute directing the station in wrong direction, perhaps..
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@jolran said:
Yeah, probably. But I thought the question was how to slow down the RPM in strong winds..
Won't rotating the blades so their face normal is perpendicular to the wind reduce the rpm? Or at least prevent the wind from increasing the rpm?
That's what I was talking about if you didn't comprehend me -
@anton_s said:
@jolran said:
Yeah, probably. But I thought the question was how to slow down the RPM in strong winds..
Won't rotating the blades so their face normal is perpendicular to the wind reduce the rpm? Or at least prevent the wind from increasing the rpm?
That's what I was talking about if you didn't comprehend meThat is what I was looking for Constant RPM. It's easier to rate the torque power at a set RPM. And control the current flow from a DC generator. Besides at higher RPMs the down wind side of the blade causes air turbulence to the next blade which causes more buffeting. (At least so I have read) lol
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@unknownuser said:
That's what I was talking about if you didn't comprehend me
Looks like I did not. My bad.
I know nothing about the subject, in particular..
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I thought the most efficient form of windmill was the Turkish variant. It is inside and the building has vertical slats which can be adjusted to increase or decrease the amount of wind applied to the sails, they also rotate around a vertical rather than horizontal axes.
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