Wind Turbine Blades 102 Focus: This lesson will provide a basic overview of wind turbine blades.

Grade Level: 9th Grade to 12th Grade Prerequisites: Basic Algebra Required Time: 50 minutes 1. Ask students: What things affect the power output from wind turbines? Get several answers: wind speed, generators, size of turbine, blade design. How effectively a wind turbine can capture the wind, directly determines how much electrical power is created by the turbine. Wind contacts the blades and rotates them, how well this occurs depends a lot on the blade design. Ask students: What things affect how much energy wind turbine blades can capture? Get several answers: length, number, pitch/angle, shape, weight, material, curvature, twist, wind speed, air density, etc. *[Tell students they will be quizzed over the material to come] *Talk about the number of blades attached to the hub:

One Blade not very efficient because a single blade must rotate more rapidly to capture same amount of wind as multiple blades; can become imbalanced as it rotates.

Two Blade 10% more efficient than single blade design.

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Three Blade 5% more efficient than two blade design; better overall balance during rotation; higher rotation speed is not needed. More than three blades increases the cost of the turbine with no significant gain in efficiency, therefore 3 blades is the optimum number. What are wind turbine blades made of? 2. Ask students: If you were going to make a wind turbine blade, what would you make it out of and why? Wood flexible, strong, lightweight, inexpensive, abundant Metal strong but heavy, expensive Fiberglass lightweight, strong, inexpensive [Most modern turbine blades are made of light wood and fiber glass] Ask students: What is the name of the thing the blades are attached to? (Ans: the Hub) [The Blades rotate the Hub which rotates the main shaft also known as the lowspeed-shaft] Blade Aerodynamics Define Aerodynamics: Aerodynamics is the study of how air flows and how it interacts with objects. 3. Explain to students: A wind turbine blade is very similar to an airplane wing (also known as an airfoil). Both have air flowing around them and, as a result, are subjected to aerodynamic forces which create movement. Wind turbine blades experience mainly 2 aerodynamic forces: Lift and Drag

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*Draw an airfoil cross-section and label the aerodynamic forces: Lift and Drag (noting that they are perpendicular to each other).

[It is the Lift force that plays the biggest part in making the wind turbine blades rotate] Explain to students: notice the cross-section shape of an airfoil; that it is more round on the top and less on the bottom. This design essentially creates faster airflow over the top of the blade and therefore, less pressure. Because there is less pressure on the top of the blade than the bottom, a force results that moves in the direction of lower pressure.LIFT! Lift is always perpendicular to the blades upper surface and causes the blades to move (rotating the hub). The faster the wind blows, the more Lift that is produced on the blade, hence the faster the rotation.

LIFT

DRAG ANGLE OF ATTACK

Drag is a force that tries to stop the motion of the blade. It is essentially the friction of air against the blade surface. Drag is perpendicular to Lift and is in the same direction as the air flow along the blade surface. Drag can also act perpendicular to an object (e.g. a canoe paddle). [Keep in mind the more surface area the blade has, the more drag it will have]. *Use a ruler to describe the following concepts. Explain that the Angle of Attack also determines the amount of Lift and Drag. Angle of attack is the angle between the direction of the oncoming wind and the tilt or pitch of the
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blade with respect to the oncoming wind (represented by in the diagram above). As the Angle of Attack becomes larger, more lift is created but as the angle becomes even larger (> 30), the blade will begin to STALL (decreasing lift). A complete Stall will result in no movement. If the blades of a wind turbine were in a Stall position, the flat part would be facing into the wind and the blades would not be rotating. (e.g. if an airplane were in a completely stalled position, its nose would be pointed straight up.) On the other hand, Furling is when the angle of attack becomes smaller. Furling also works to reduce rotation of the blades (just like Stalling does), but slows them down because the blades are acting like huge canoe paddles. If the blades of a wind turbine were in a furled position, the edge of the blade would be facing into the wind and would not be rotating. [There is an ideal pitch of the blade that creates the best rotation] Modern blades are actually designed with a twist along their length. This is to maximize the angle of attack along the length, getting the best lift and rotation. Tip Speed 4. Ask Students: When talking about wind turbines, what do you think tipspeed refers to? (Ans: how fast the tip of the blade is moving) Ask students to picture a Merry-Go-Round. If they are standing toward the center as it turns, they dont experience much speed. But as they move to the outer edge (away from the center), they experience much faster movement even though the merry-go-round is rotating at the same speed. Optional Exercise: have 4 or 5 students stand in a line (shoulder to shoulder) and hold hands. Have everyone start walking but the person on one end is stationary. The idea is to maintain a straight line without breaking hand contact (like a rotating clock hand). Does the person farthest out have to walk the fastest to keep up? How about the person next to the center? [The person farthest to the edge is experiencing the tip-speed velocity of a blade the same length.] The speed at the edge of a rotating object is faster than it is at the objects center.

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(Equation 1) The tipspeed ratio (TSR) is a measure of how efficient the blades are relative to wind conditions. If the blades rotate too slowly, a lot of potential wind power is lost; if they rotate too fast, its like the wind is running into a wall. Ideal TSR is between 6-8 for typical 3-blade industrial wind turbines. In this range, the most possible power is being extracted from the wind. Have students work this exercise: Using equation (1), what is the tip speed of a wind turbine blade (in m/s) if the wind speed is 8 m/s and the TSR is 10.6? (Ans: 10.6 * 8 = 84.8 m/s) Question: Assuming the wind speed is still 8m/s, what would the tip speed have to be to achieve a TSR of 7? (Ans: 7 * 8 = 56 m/s) Question: Can you think of anything that can be done to achieve this slower tipspeed? (Ans: shorter blade length) Explain: The main shaft speed in revolutions per minute (rpm) depends on the tip speed and the diameter of the swept area of the blades. [Swept area is the area of an imaginary circle created if you were to trace the tip of a blade as it makes a complete revolution]

Swept Area

(Equation 2) where T is the blade tip-speed and D is the diameter of the swept area.
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Have students work this exercise: Using equation (2), calculate the approximate length (in meters) of a single wind turbine blade if the main shaft rotates at 18rpm and the tip-speed is 84.8m/s? Ans: D = (84.8 * 60)/(18 * 3.14) = 90.02m Therefore: single blade length = 90.02/2 = 45 meters *What happens when blades rotate too fast? Have the students watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL-cRuYAxg0. Power Output 5. Explain to students: The whole purpose of a mechanical wind turbine is to produce electrical power. Power is the amount of work done in a given amount of time and is expressed in units of Watts. 1 kiloWatt (kW) = 1000 Watts 1 MegaWatt (MW) = 1,000,000 Watts Show the basic wind power equation: for 3-blade turbine Power = Watts (Equation 3)

Where is the air density (1.23 kg/m3); A is the blade swept area (m2); and U is the wind speed (m/s)3. Exercise: If the blades on your turbine are 4 meters in length and the wind speed is 9m/s, what is the theoretical power output of your turbine? Ans: swept area = ( * r2) = ( * 42) = 50.27 m2 Power = (.5 * 1.23 * 50.27 * 93) = 22,538 Watts There is a physical limit to how much power can be extracted from the wind. It is NEVER 100%. So we should account for these limits by saying: any wind turbine can at best only capture about 40% of the maximum theoretical value. Therefore our answer of 22,538 Watts must be multiplied by 0.40 to get a more realistic power output. 22,538 * 0.40 = 9,015 Watts or about 9 kW of power. *Compare this to the 1,500,000 Watts produced by a typical turbine on a wind farm!
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6. Explain to students: Looking at the wind power equation: Power = , what happens to the power output when you change the length of the blades? If you change the blade length, then the swept area also changes. Power is directly proportional to A (P ~ A). So if air density and air speed stay constant, then we doubled the swept area, the power output would also double. *What happens to power if the wind speed changes? Power is directly proportional to the cube of the wind speed (P ~ U3). So, if air density and swept area stay constant, and the wind speed doubles, the power output would increase by a factor of 8 (e.g. (U3) if U is doubled then, (23) = 8 if U is tripled then, (33) = 27). 7. Quiz Questions: a. How many blades are the optimum number for big wind turbines? Why? (Ans: 3 because most efficient for the cost) b. What are most wind turbine blades made of? Why? (Ans: wood/fiberglass because light-weight and strong yet flexible) c. What are the blades attached to that rotates? (Ans: the hub) d. What are the 2 main aerodynamic forces at work on a wind turbine blade? (Ans: lift and drag) e. How does the wind cause the blades to move? (Ans: pressure difference creating lift) f. What is it called when the blades tilt relative to the wind? (Ans: pitching) g. Is the angle of attack large or small if the blade is Furled? (Ans: small) h. Is the angle of attack large or small if the blade is Stalled? (Ans: large) i. What does TSR stand for? What does it tell you? (Ans: tip-speed-ratio tells how efficiently blades are capturing wind) j. If the swept area of the turbine blades were to double, what would happen to the output power? (Ans: it would also double) k. If the wind speed doubled, what would happen to the output power? (Ans: would increase by factor of 8) Optional: Experiments with blades can be simple or very complicated, depending on how deep you want to go. Some things you can test about blades include: Blade Length, Blade Number, Blade Pitch, Blade Shape, Blade Materials, and Blade Weight.
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