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Forum Index : Windmills : New VAWT, the ART Turbine
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| Drewartturbine Newbie  Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
Hello All, I am showing my finally out of the dark VAWT project to the world and I thought you guys would appreciate it. It's been 4 years of sweatin and sanding, but my newest version is amazing I am sure you will agree youtube intense low speed testing moving platform testing Thanks, hope you like. Best |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Now thats cool! Thanks for posting Drew The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| SnowGhost Newbie Joined: 09/09/2010 Location: AustraliaPosts: 16 |
What sort of power output were you seeing at what speeds, on your mobile testing? |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
I tested 2 turbines on that rig, #15 with an independent engineer, employed by a potential licencee who said that the limits of the test rig made it difficult to say exactly what the upper bound of performance was, but reported it was at least Cp .17 this was a 1.75 sq m unit running at tsr 1.68. Later with an improved test rig and a new version of the turbine, i ran my own tests and with #16 got an unloaded tsr of 2.4(in utube video) and an optimally loaded tsr of 1.8, with a Cp of .25. This I see as pretty stellar because after consulting with a Phd in conventional wind turbine modeling, what I was told is that a conventional turbine in the same size range would be lucky to have a Cp of .15 due to the very poor Renoylds number of there very low balde chord. |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
I just edited some text into the moving platform video to help people more easily understand the full implications of the video Thanks again http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ImNDlg-RA more about moving platform testing |
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MacGyver Guru  Joined: 12/05/2009 Location: United StatesPosts: 1329 |
Kinetic Art I love it. Sort of reminds me of one of those things you hold half an orange against whilst it rotates and extracts all the juice. Thanks for sharing; very cool. . . . . . Mac Nothing difficult is ever easy! Perhaps better stated in the words of Morgan Freeman, "Where there is no struggle, there is no progress!" Copeville, Texas |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
You're not far off MacGyver! I have tested a couple of cross sections that were along that line. These thinner ones have a bit of an optical illusion, looking much thicker than they are. I think this one has a depth to chord line of around 1 to 8, so a bit thinner than most juicers ;-) |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
Here's a link to the newest Video with a new to the public rotor. The small blue rotor isn't balanced very well yet, and is 100% styrene foam, no glass skin yet. That doesn't stop it though, wait sec 14, and see really go. This is a good example of an impossible site for a conventional turbine. Very turbulent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FypAhDOg9oY |
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| Air Bender Senior Member  Joined: 25/01/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 206 |
Hi Drew This is a new aproach to wind turbines that looks to be working very well I think the angle toward art is cool, it is the type of thing most people would like to put up in there back yard. I was thinking if the council comes knocking on my door asking what it is i have sticking up in my back yard, weather i could get away with calling it a peice of turbine art 
All the best Dean. |
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Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
That amazing contraption would *really* turn heads if you embed LED lights and let 'er rip around Christmas time .
Just out of curiosity, is there a lot of sideways wind load on that design? When I was visiting the states many years ago a place in Oregon was selling small versions of this as a wind driven ornament. It was simply a stack of wood slats on a central shaft that were glued together offset to give the spiral form. That got me thinking if this were a way to replicate your idea, if the wood is soft the final shaping should not be too difficult. Come to think of it, I might make a small one to put on the roof top and have self powered LED's in it - now, there's a commercial idea for those so inclined  Klaus |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
@ Air Bender It is very interesting to me, that while after the fact I have good aerodynamic and structural reasons for the shape I have now, sometimes the process of making turbines, the decisions were based as much on what seemed like simple aesthetics. ART and Science sit uncomfortably close to many within their domains. I just read a very interesting book called "why everyone (else) is a hypocrite", and it opens the door to a very different way of thinking about thinking and of examining the decision making process. Showing evidence that the historic idea, of us as animal beings being controlled by a unitary "self" is not likely how our brain actually works but only how we appear under self examination.. The author effectively compares the human brain to an iphone, explaining that as a big multipurpose "meat" computer, it has different "apps" running, some of which communicate with each other, some of which specifically don't for good reason (makes me think of the old saw "we judge ourselves by our intent, while we judge others by there actions". Different apps, one for examining ourselves, another for others. The app for me that judges how things work, and why they will work, is not always very well connected to the part of me that communicates. Thus I may make a decision rationalized by the speaking part of me to be based on what I think will be aesthetic, and yet, a submerged app, perhaps by some named "intuition" may have done a probability calculation that pushed the decision forward, which my brain accepted and created an explanation for (aesthetic)... R.H. wrote something along this line, Humans are rationalizing animal, not rational animals, we decide what we want, then why we should have it! Sorry! Rant Rant, but the blend of philosophy, psychology and neurology that today gets branded evolutionary psychology is a hobby. I am endlessly entertained by trying to figure out how I work ;-) believing full well that no system can examine itself! @Tinker Yes the embedded led's, and blinking them at the right rate could create a very power pesistance of vision effect, creating a huge glowing display. This idea has been patented by a UK company Quiet Revolution, and so is effectively public domain in the rest of the world I believe. The Gorlov inspired designs have a slightly higher TSR than the ART Turbine, and have 3 blades, so would be able to create the effect at much lower wind speeds than the ART. The QR website used to have a nice web page on this, however it was a bit unsettling and "Blade Runner" esc, to think a successful turbine like this could become visually ubiquitous, thus, we may be further pummeled by more glowing blinking advertising! If you decide to go ahead with it, there are some cheap electronic kits out there designed to make use of the POV effect to create a txt display. One I recall is like a yo-yo that you whirl in a disk/plane in front of you, and the flashing led's show a txt that you have programmed. I bet one could be re-purposed to a turbine fairly easily. I think it was from "thinkgeek.com" If you do it, and are interested lets talk, I'd love to try it on one of my turbines, but my electronics skills are pretty marginal, and I don't have time to do it anyway. QR, is one of the many trying to pick up on the opportunity of Dr. Gorlov letting his patents lapse in many countries around the world. Most of those companies are basing there designs and calculations on Gorlov's data, which has been shown privately to be a bit problematic but as is often the case in science, retractions don't happen as often as errors. Like the Blackwell report on the Savonius turbine, which predicts a TSR of 1, and a Cp of .2, and has lead to much gnashing of teeth amongst amateurs and pros alike as they find the experiments in the field don't come close to the wind tunnel work published by Blackwell. I got to see the results and disappointment of a company that owned the Canadian license for the Gorlov turbine, and spent 500,000.00 trying to replicate his results and commercialize his technology before coming to grips with the reality that even with Gorlov's help they couldn't do it. In the real world it didn't work as well as Gorlov had found it to work in his lab. This is one of the reasons I haven't rushed to the wind tunnel, but kept my experiments as close to the real world (moving platform testing) as possible. It sometimes left me quite disappointed, comparing my results to the real world, but kept me real. I wish the thesis by Ian Ross, done in 2010 was public domain. It would be so helpful to VAWT researchers everywhere! Well I've had enough ranting for now but to finaly speak to Tinkers other point @Tinker Yes, I have seen this whirlygig too. A differance can be seen between it's flat cross section, and my patent. My patented shape works much better, but is much more difficult to reproduce. I am able to create and fair complex shapes in without to much difficulty in part because of my long history as a sculptor who has worked in many different media. I am hoping to do an article for MAKE magazine, on how I created one of the larger turbines. If I do, I will be sure to post links. Best Wishes Drew |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
@Tinker re: POV effect, here's an updated version of the toy kit that I imagine could be re-purposed. POV Spokey kit another aproach, specific to wind turbines http://krazatchu.ca/?page_id=198 http://krazatchu.ca/?page_id=198 I looked and see that QR is no longer talking about the patent. I suspect that marketing people told them the idea was more disturbing than appealing to most people. I am not sure that's true, but overused I agree. However the idea of a small display being able to tell windspeed, turbine ouptut, and slowly apearing and disapearing, maybe on the frequency of 1 minute, might be quite nice. However, seeing every QR turbine as a giant Coke add, would be pretty ugly. |
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norcold Guru Joined: 06/02/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 670 |
Drewartturbine, Will follow your turbine`s development with much interest also your other hobby "philosophy". Got to get that book Why everone(else) is a hypocrite, no need to apologise for rant rant(at least to me) I enjoy that human side we portray on this forum. Rant Rant  We come from the land downunder. Vic |
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| Tinker Guru Joined: 07/11/2007 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1904 |
Thanks for those links Drew, You are way ahead of me regarding applications. Using it for advertising had never occurred to me but then, from your "rant"  comments I can see you are thinking on a completely different level than I am .
I was not aware that you had patented your turbine nor of the fact there is a patentable method with that turbine 'blade' shape. But its whizzing so fast its hard to see just what exact shape it has. I wish you lots of success with it. To me with windmills its just a case of tinkering, could not even be bothered to consider patenting my many 'original' ideas. Klaus |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
I thought you guys might get a kick out of seeing some of my very early experiments building Savonius class turbines (using one of the Rahai cross sections) helicaly, out of fabric Fabric Helical Rahai varible area, on moving platform Best Wishes |
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| Drewartturbine Newbie Joined: 09/08/2011 Location: Posts: 30 |
And here's another new video of me using the NASA foilsim program to explain flow around a Savonius class turbine, and the enormous difference TSR can make Nasa foilsim and discussion of the ART Turbine |
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