Mechanical design of turbine blades in renewable wind technology

Overview

Design a wind turbine blade which can effectively utilize wind to generate energy while being easy to assemble, reliable under various conditions and weather, as well as being efficient at harvesting energy.

For our design project Renewable Technology Challenge, each team was assigned a specific scenario requiring certain conditions to be met and different circumstances to be taken into account. My team was assigned scenario #3, EWB Humanitarian Aid Mission, in which we were given the challenge of designing a device which can produce energy via wind, which is made of renewable and easily accessible materials. This device should be reliable such that it can produce energy in the Guatemalan city of Quetzaltenango which lacks widespread infrastructure. This device must also be easy to assemble, reliable under various weather conditions, and reliable and efficient enough to become a sustainable source of energy for the villagers.

🗣️Soft Skills

<aside> ✅ Collaboration

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<aside> ✅ Compromise

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<aside> ✅ Critical Thinking

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<aside> ✅ Oral Communication

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<aside> ✅ Problem Solving

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⚙️Technical Skills

<aside> 📋 Autodesk Inventor 2023

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<aside> 📋 Ansys Granta Edupack

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<aside> 📋 Microsoft Word

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<aside> 📋 Microsoft Excel

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My Role as Subject Matter Expert

Having the role of subject matter expert, I was in charge of citing all documents and articles used, so I created a document to house all sources and indicated which parts they corresponded to. This document was shared with fellow teammates so they could add their sources.

Design Process

Preliminary Research

Preliminary Research Memo

Prior to starting this project, each team member concluded a brief research on wind turbines and wind turbine blades to better understand their functioning, characteristics, properties and design decisions.

Technical Objective Tree

Each team member was given a scenario to which they had to come up with an objective tree to visualize the key elements to be taken into account when designing the wind turbine blade. I created a list to help me build the objective tree:

  1. Create a hierarchy of the goals and objectives depending on the scenario
  2. Determine the key goals and which category they fall into
  3. Differentiate and distinguish our objectives and constraints
  4. Being concise without leaving out any crucial goals

As each student was assigned a scenario, I was assigned Scenario 3 - Roof Top Generators. In this scenario, I had to take various elements into account, for instance: