| Summary: | The goal of this project was to design small-scale wind turbine blades for eventual power coefficient testing at the USR’s Wind Tunnel Lab. Solidworks, a computer drafting program, was used to design four blades with different aerodynamic structures that can work with a pre-existing test setup. The blade shapes included leading tubercle, trailing tubercle, and winglet designs alongside a standard airfoil shape. The tubercle blades are a form of biomimicry and are designed to mimic the bumpy nature of humpback whale fins. Adding these large bumps, called tubercles, to the wind turbine blade has the overall effect of increasing max lift and decreasing drag. This tubercle effect is a recent discovery and its applications in airfoil design are still being researched. Designs with tubercles at both the leading and trailing edge of the blades were created for this project to study their overall effects on lift and drag through the channeling of flow over the airfoil. The winglet blade incorporated a vertical wing tip extension, known as a winglet. Winglets on airfoil blades decrease the induced drag on the blade by reducing wingtip vortices and have become popular among modern aircraft design since the 1970s. Future projects at the USR Wind Tunnel Lab may compare data collected from these blades to draw conclusions on the advantages and disadvantages of each design.
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