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My first two VAWT's

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ralphius:
I've recently got into experimenting with wind power, and this is my first post on the forum. Here's my first two cheap and cheerful attempts.

Dead simple and cheap drag type VAWT made out of a couple of pieces of scrap guttering (youtube video)
youtube.com/watch?v=j1b7n6nCgIQ
Rotor height is 680mm, diameter is 192mm, 0.13m2, overlap\gap in the centre is 34mm to allow air from one side to pass to the other


I also 3D printed a helical darrius design that had good reviews on thingiverse (youtube video)
youtube.com/watch?v=JAakWow5a4k
(NACA0024 aerofoil, 375mm high, 330mm dia, 0.12m2)
Unfortunately the performance is much worse than my couple of pieces of guttering despite having only slightly less swept area. Not sure how to improve it at present, it seems to start moving ok but just not get up to a decent speed?

MagnetJuice:
Welcome Ralph,

It is always good to see people experimenting with wind power. Hands on experience is the best way to learn.

"I also 3D printed a helical darrius design that had good reviews on thingiverse"

If you keep improving the design, soon you will get good reviews from someone that knows about Volts and Amps.

Thanks for posting.

Ed

ralphius:
Thanks for the positive response :-)

Tried to improve my PVC gutter turbine by cutting the rotor in half and turning the top half 90 degrees out of phase to the bottom half to reduce torque pulsations and therefore vibration. New video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3HUFiiWd34

I think its still vibrating a bit at high RPM but difficult to tell as wind speeds have been a lot lower today.

---

With the 3D printed darrius design I've taken it apart to try sanding some of the blades smoother, hopefully that will help. I'm tempted to print some more blades to either increase the height of the rotor, or put another 3 blades offset 30 degrees to the current set to double the solidity ratio within the same swept area.

SparWeb:
Thanks for sharing the video links, Ralphius,
I've enabled the link in the latest one for you.
Anyone who wants to see this and the others can click on the link, follow your YT channel.

Welcome to Fieldlines!

ralphius:
Had more wind yesterday, unfortunately too much wind and my turbine flew apart and disintegrated. Weather forecast was for gusts up to 40mph although I don't have a weather station so no way of knowing what it actually was in my back garden.


The blades had come out previously so its had silicone sealant in the past. This had just pulled off the surface of the material and obviously wasn't strong enough. I next tried dabs of superglue and this was what failed yesterday. It actually pulled some of the wood apart vertically and pulled chunks out of the PVC. I have obviously vastly underestimated the forces involved when this thing gets up to a few hundred RPM.

While it was apart, I checked the ball bearings top and bottom. They don't look so healthy anymore and they're making a grinding noise. I guess these were under-specified too!

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