As a group of four, we were given the task to design a wind turbine blade that is durable and able to power a city the size of Kingston. We were also instructed to minimize the mass of our turbine blades, this would reduce its inertia and therefore maximize power output.
As we tackled this project, we focused heavily on defining the problem we were given. This includes determining the functions, objectives, and constraints of our solutions. As a team, we came up with the following problem statement:
We aim to create a turbine blade which should efficiently harness large amounts of wind energy to power the city of Kingston, Ontario. The blade should possess a long lifespan, should minimize inertia to maximize its power efficiency, and must have a maximum deflection below 10 mm.
We combined our ideas and created an objective tree to accompany our problem statement:
"RENEWABLE ENERGY FOR A LARGE POPULATION" is the name of the project scenario we were assigned.
In the following weeks, we explored the world of materials science. Specifically, we learned about different properties of materials such as Young's moduli (stiffness), yield strength, and ductility and how they affected deflection and other variables at certain geometries. After calculating our MPI (Materials Properties Index) and utilizing a database of available materials, we decided on using carbon fiber (specifically named CFRP) for our wind turbine blades.
We also ran calculations and tests to find the optimal thickness for our turbine blades. As we were working with the material CFRP, we had to specifically account for its Young's Modulus and Yield Strength values in our final design. This affected the values we used in our estimations for deflection given a certain thickness, and it also played a role in deciding the other aspects of our blade's shape. Below you can see a preliminary estimation of deflection when the thickness of the blade is 50 mm:
I promise my handwriting is usually better than this. 😅
From here we were able to design and test our final solution. A fully-fledged wind turbine blade made out of carbon fiber reinforced polymers.
