Wind Turbine Project
Designing a reverse wind turbine that uses a gearbox to convert a motor's high angular velocity to the fan's low angular velocity
Technical skills: CAD (Solidworks), 3D Printing, Machine Design
As part of the design project in ME 354: Machine Design, we had to build a reverse wind turbine that used a gear ratio to scale down the motor’s angular velocity to make the fan spin as slow as possible. The specifications were:
- All components must fit within an 8” x 8” x 8” cube
- All gears have to be 3/8” at maximum
- The design must be self-supported
- Teams are expected to make design and manufacture the gears, shafts, gearbox and turbine blades
Wind turbine CAD and 3D printed prototype
In the end, with a gear ratio of 1/1536, we were able to scale down the motor’s 15,000 rpm to the fan’s 9.8 rpm. Our final report can be found below.