Experimental Study of a Pinwheel-Type Wind Turbine

Abstract

Pinwheels have been familiar as toys for hundreds of years. Not only do they have an attractive appearance, they can also be fabricated from just one piece of plate. Application is possible, e.g. for education and architectural design. The purpose of this paper is to clarify the characteristics and to determine the optimum design configuration of pinwheel type wind turbines. The authors fabricated the test rotors with various shapes and carried out the experiment in a wind tunnel. As a result, the following facts were obtained: (1) Power coefficient with the traditional 4 blades has, CPmax = 0.17 at λ = 2. (2) High tip speed is obtained by cutting the frontal area of pinwheel. Tip speed ratio at no load can be easily changed from λ = 3 to 6 by changing the cutting area. Maximum power coefficient CPmax = 0.22 was obtained at tip speed ratio λ = 3.5. (3) Increased torque is obtained by cutting the edge area of the pinwheel. Tip speed ratio at no load can be easily changed from λ = 2 to 3, and torque coefficient can be easily changed from CQmax = 0.15 to 0.25, by changing the cut area.