The Effect of Blade Shape, Number of Blades and Blade Pitch on a Wind Power Generator

Wind Power is an important environmental technology of the future and provides an alternative to the continued use of fossil fuels. In our experiment, we analyzed the effect of blade shape, pitch and number of blades on the rotational speed in revolutions per minute (RPM) of a wind generator. We found the optimum combination of variables using Design of Experiment (DOE) analysis and also modeled the voltage output of each combination of blades using computer graphing software.

Our results revealed that pitch had the greatest effect on the rotational output of a wind generator with pitched blades. The number of blades had the greatest effect on the RPM's of generators with non-pitched blades. Overall, pitched blades spinning perpendicular to the wind spun at a much faster rate than non-pitched blades spinning parallel to the wind. Consequently, generators with pitched blades produced the highest voltage outputs since high RPM's correlate directly to voltage production.

Research Done By:

Brandon Bondy
Lake Shore

Antony Paul
Lake Shore

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