User:Apagnotta41/ProjectTwo

Project Preference
1. Wind Turbine 2. Mobile robot hallway 3. Autonomous Power Wheel

Problem Statement
''In one or two sentences, describe the project that your group will be working on. Identify what CDIO phase (Conceive, Design, Implement, or Operate) your group will complete in this project cycle.''

Project Plan
Briefly describe your group's plan for the next 4 weeks, including major tasks that will be completed each week.

Week 1 Narrative
This week I was going to create a graph and interpret the data and results from Gulraizes testing, however this was not completed because the shrouds were not completed. So instead of creating graphs i decided to research more in depth what has an was has not worked when it comes to wind turbines.

There was a design base off a Jet Engine called the floDesign wind turbine. It was a shroud that created a spin vortex that would in hopes that would spin the blades faster. Once tested and put in real life situation it failed. Here you can see the concept but into works and how it does not work.

What I have found out is that a wind lens or wind shroud works best. What you need to do is create a low pressure area that sucks the wind through and a shroud that catches more air to spin the blade faster and try to capture more energy.

What I was thinking and designing or an idea i was thinking of for the turbine was pretty much combining a wind shroud and wind lens together. On the front you have a wind shroud that pretty much in essence funnels the wind in to the fan than on the back a wind lens. Which would create an area on low pressure that would suck the wind through. Now all the wind that you funneled into the turbine has somewhere to go and is sucked through

Week 2 Narrative
This week our group tested for baseline results with no shroud. We decided to keep the same windspeed and change how far we blow the wind from. We decided to check the watts produced at 2 feet, 5 feet, and 10 feet. We decided to do this for a couple of reasons. First we had no way to check the wind speed that the leaf blower produced. It had to different speeds but we could not check. We decided to just keep that the same and change the distance at which we blew the wind.

My task this week was to graph all of our data. This week we tested with no shroud. With no shroud and at 2 feet we produced .32 watts, at 5 feet we produced .09 watts, and at 10 feet we produced .02 watts.



Here you can see how the graph makes sense. The further away you are the less watts is produced. We hope to produce the same pattern however with greater amount of watts.

Week 3 Narrative
This week our group decided we need to create a back up shroud just in case we could not get our 3-D printer one done. We decided Zack would make a, what we called, back-up shroud. He did this. We wanted this done in order to get more in detailed with testing. Along with creating a back up shroud we re did our baseline testing and this time, instead of only getting three measurements from different feet away, we decided to start one foot away and go all the way back until we produced 0 watts.

During testing this week we started without the back-up shroud on and just did a baseline no shroud to find the watts output. After 12 feet the turbine would no longer be able to produce and wattage and that was our limit for the rest of our testing. Starting at one foot and going to twelve we tested every 16 inches in order to get the most accurate data. After we got our baseline testing done we tested with the shroud with shroud we were pleased to find a slight increase in the watts output. We did the same thing as before started at one foot and went back until we hit 0 watts. This time instead of stopping at 12 feet the shroud was able to funnel wind in and help the turbine until 18 and 2/3 feets away.

After all the testing was done, my job was to graph and interpret the data. I created a table and then used the data form the table and turned it into a graph.

As you can see from the table and graph, when we had the shroud on we were able to consistently produce more watts than compared to when the shroud was off. With this one shroud test results it looks as if the shroud does help the turbine. However, you notice a drop when the shroud was on we believe this is due to a design flaw. When the fan would blow on it really hard and fast the blade would spin off its axis and give a bad reading once we got pretty close.

For next week, when we were testing we noticed a couple flaws in the turbine. First off when testing the fan would hit the plexi glass, this led to Zack and Gulraize to take it apart sand it down and reassemble it. Then from there, when testing it was noticed that the fan blade would spin off its axis because there was nothing there holding it in place. For this week, we are going to have to look at it and see it is possible to fix this issue and also print out the next shroud and test some more.

Week 4 Narrative
For this week we decided to not rely on the 3-D printer at all and just make a whole bunch of shrouds out of random materials and if we got a 3-D printed one than that would be great. Then from there we would test them all and see which yields the best results. For this week i was tasked to create a shroud and fix the base of the turbine.

To start off I just heated up the hot glue gun and reglued the piece down in order to insure it was stable. This did not take long however, was pretty crucial. Along with that i was tasked to create a shroud. This led me to think why not create 2 of all the same size, but go back to our original plan and change the insides a lil bit. So i started to scheme of what I could make the shrouds out of. I went to home depot to find a couple of funnels in which I did.



However as you can see after buying six of them (in case of a mistake) they were way too small. So i started to look around my garage and found some cones that were the perfect size.



From there i cut them up until the base was 4.75 inches.



This made a good shroud, and was a different angle at which the others were made. From there i cut out one more and schemed to make the insides different. Back in our original plan we were going to make 3 of the same degree but change the inside. So i took that concept and make two. One with a spiral on the inside like a gun barrel and one with just straight lines. After cutting the cones i had to think of a way to create the spiral. I was going to carve away the inside but thought that the cone was to thin and would rip. So instead i decided to hot glue straws in to get the spirals and straight in effect.



After bringing them in and testing them, the spirals max watts was .31 and the straight lines max input was .27, but after 16 inches it leveled out pretty evenly. I would say the spiral worked better then the straight lines one because it produced the most watts. However i think if that shroud concept was printed on the 3-D printer it would have done even better comparatively to the straight lines.