1830 A Darwin Wind Turbine Breakthrough
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
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Great. One suggestion for a very useful varient of this is a 3/4 profile that can affix to the corner of a building. The most wind on a building is at the corners where wind has to concentrate to flow around the corners. It's a minor variant of that one but easier to install. It's that, just with 2 segments less.
clever, clever clever clever - I like that mate - and as you can see - I like it a lot lol
Seriously brilliant! We don't get a ton of steady wind where I am, so that would help maximize what we do get!
I have been wanting a castle turret design on my house for years... this might solve it for me... Thank you. (The only thing is that I think for permanent outdoor use, I would have to surround the thing in a protective wire mesh to prevent birds and insects from making a home in the slats... and that would tend to diminish the flow... but I don't see a way around that.)
That's solid idea. I wonder if that would also work around a rainpipe.
@@ThinkingandTinkering what about at the peak as well?
I don't know why, but I get a little thrill or joy when a solution appears that is SO simple and just works really well. Delicious!
lol - me too!!
ditto, it always points at "lets optimize more!". that with a short stack outer reducer cone and center cone (cross section of round) \ /\ /
to increase velocity to the outer 2/3 to 3/4 the blades where they make torque..?
like a jet intake or a velocity stack.. non moving parts.
Make each 35 degree wedge a foil to increase the wind speed, make the top most wedge cap a hyperbolic curve. Coat the back walls of the wedge in golf ball surfacing. You'll improve efficiency by about 200%.
Interesting ideas, what percentage of the back walls should be covered by the dimpling?
@@em9594 Wherever the surface has the greatest resistance. The dimpling creates microvortices which create a cushion of air. This lowers the overall resistance of the air flow, thus improving the airflow down towards the blades. Given the design you have which is wedge shaped, I'd suspect the greatest air resistance is the back third of each wall where it converges to the central point. This is also where the greatest section of wind pressure will be thus the greatest section of energy loss.
Making the 35 degree fins foils will also increase wind speed while still directing the air in the intended direction. This increases the internal air pressure and allows for more energy transfer to which every turbine you choose to use.
I would further suggest that you reduce the sections to just three, breaking the top down circular lithography into three sections at 120 degrees each. This reduces the overall surface area that will interfere with airflow while still directing the airflow down. The more internal walls you have the more friction and back pressure is created. A rounder backwall that funnels air down instead of sharp points and walls is what is needed for improved performance. The back wall should resemble more of a section of a rounded nose cone (or the cone of a jet engine nozzle with the widest end nearest the wind turbine).
Your current design does the job, but not nearly as efficiently as it could be.
cheers mate
I have read most of the comments, and I am amazed at the ideas being brought forward to improve the air capture unit. It I truly inspiring to see people sharing ideas. Thank you all.
Something to think about, for those planning on building a larger working model, is airborne water ingress ( like rain being blown in ) eg make sure your electrics/mechanics of your generator can cope with those and possibly also there's sufficient runoff/soakaway
Perhaps the fan could be put at the top of the column to keep rain from affecting the fan.
Some 40 years ago in a children's magazine (some European Popular Mechanics) there was a project to make wind turbines hollow and with a ring around the ends of the wings, working like inverted pulverisers or aeolipile. The idea is that while turning, they would suck not "passive" wind like in the Darwin's tower, but because the wings would make the nozzles move against the wind and thus increase the suction.
On the ground station it was planned to build a turbine, on the same chaft a mechanical rotor to be used like in a normal (non EV) wind turbine, and in the end the wind/vacuum would pass a mesh of tubes and cool them, to work as a fridge.
While watching the Darwin's turbine series (1832) I thought that it's a pity the wind is being pushed down, as compression would always be more difficult than suction. In addition, the chimney effect would diminish the coefficient of usefulness.
That's very promising!!! As you pointed out earlier .. the simpler it is .. the more likely it will be successful in bigger ways.
I think so mate
Bravo! Can't help but think about Viktor Schauberger's vortex technology work. I suspect you've opened the door to some very important leaps forward in this kind of electricity generation.
cheers mate
I’ve been watching for a long time and this is my first comment ever. Robert buddy you only need one piece of the pie and a weather vane. I know you don’t like mechanical but it’s only a bearing. Cap the top of the pie and funnel the bottom of the pie into a circle with the fan generating power. ❤
you are right mate but the bearing would have to be the size of the piece of pie and they get more expensive the bigger they get - I want to avoid mechanical not because I don't like it - I love mechanisms - I want to avoid it because they increase cost, maintenance, complexity of build and failure rate
Genius is the simplicity that the rest of us passed-by, distracted. Thank You!
cheers mate
Oh yes! Now you really get me on making my own Darwin wind turbine. Because i often travel for my work (visiting maintenance and service), it will probably take me a couple months, but i'm very excited about it.
I also thought on sticking this thing on top of Aeromine instead of those two big wings and compare the results.
I liek that idea mate - that's clever
Yes! Brother that is the stuff right there! Brilliant and so inspiring. This fruition of ideas is absolutely a breakthrough. Many thanks tinker!
lol - cheers mate
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
What a simple but clever design!
Food for thought: Instead of the cheese wedge coming to a point, if it was circular it may retain more potential energy (ie. by reducing turbulence and tightening the air column by promoting rotation).
cheers mate on both counts!
Slick. Thanks. Fooling around, tinkering really does work. Proof is the pie. Again, thanks.
lol - I agree mate !!
Nice job. would be interesting to see what wind speed you could generate with it on a length of pipe compared to the actual wind speed and also when you add a Venturi to it
yes it would!
Good show
Seems funneling along the way would increase velocity
Not being negeative but might need to factor in dealing with possibly cooling the air and when it rsins, snows there's the potential of icing & clogging
Great work Rob, thanks for sharing your discovery with us! 🙌
glad you liked it mate
It was very joyful to see your excitement and appreciate all you do for the community looking forward to building one
That is simple brilliance Rob. I appreciate that 👍🏻
thank you mate
I'm a hvac installer. Essentially you've created a duct. If you add and curve the iner throat of the "cheesy wedge" it will essentially 'pull' the air around the corner and reduce drag kind of like a air foil on a wing
Also if you flare out at the outlet you might find you increase the volume of air I wouldn't add much say 10 degree should be more than adequate. I realize it add complexity but you can do alot of neat shapes in tinkercad
nice - thank you for the suggestions mate
Always great info. Thank you Robert
cheers mate
You have me equally fascinated by the Darwin Wind Turbine...it's simplicity is so elegant and it's a very forgiving design. Thank you
I was also thinking, that you need to keep in mind the roof of the structure. You want some sort of re-direction off the roof to go back down.... OOOO I had an Apiphony... The roof could have a funell'd effect also. There would be gaps that any wind that blows up, would go up and into the middle tube going back down.
Thanks for upgrade, you are inspiring!
Fantastic and simple ideas here. Congratulations! Dont know if anyone already said this but one segment sending air downwards will pull air from the other segments as well so the air reaching the lower generator will carry more air than the one sent trought that segment. Can you try and see if this is significant! Thank you. KR
thank you a million times. this is brilliant.
That's plain awesome 👏
That is truly awesome, actually blown away how simple and effective your solution is, genius
Has the resemblance of a starwars/startrek craft of some kind . Nice work putting the louvers inside
cheers mate
even without a turbine / generator at the bottom, this would make a great way to draw in cool air into your house in the summer in the mostly un air conditioned houses in the UK.
I know you really like this but, I know for a fact, I've built one, that a shielded savonious is much more efficient. It will grab air from 360 degrees around it and spin the turbine past its normal tsr of only 0.8. The ones I've constructed and tested boost the tsr up to 1.6. Also I don't believe you've looked at the Sharp Cycloturbine yet, which is a very high torque wind turbine which can be geared up to provide the high rpm needed to run an alternator.
The big advantage of the Darwin design is it can be very tall, is very inexpensive and simple to construct and doesn't have a long axis of rotation that the Savonious or other VAWT designs have. The model Robert is playing with here is just proof of concept, imagine it instead as a 50' tower 4 m in diameter instead. One problem that hasn't been addressed yet in this modeling is the exit path for the spent air.
And there I go mixing imperial and metric again, lol. :D
@@JonLovestheLord Exit path could be ventilation for the work shop.
oh I get it mate but a key advantage here is it is not a turbine it is actually a wind catcher - pretty much any turbine could be used if situated correctly
I have been watching this project with great interest. You are making huge advances with this technology. I wonder if you put a smaller set of slots along the centre tube, (maybe at 45deg) it will create lower pressure in the centre and draw more air in (Venturi effect) sort of like an airbrush. Maybe even just holes (not aligned with opposite side holes) in the centre could create the effect as well.
or maybe an internal cone, or slight reduction cone underneath for velocity into the blades like \ /\ / (cross section of the round) like a turbine jet engine intake.
center doesn't give torque like mid-to-tip of blades do anyway, its like velocity stacks and ports of an engine.
I don't really know mate - but I like the question I will look into it
Hello Robert,
That looks great but I'm sure there is turbulence which is losing energy in the tip of the wedges.
I believe that If you made each fin slightly deeper than the fin below it, so there would be a gradual increase all the way up until there was no more room left in your wedge for any more fins and with a downward curve over each extension, including a fully enclosed curved top fin, then you would eliminate a lot of turbulence and create a more efficient flow.
Just a thought.
Love your channel, keep us smiling bruv. 😁
Peace.
nice thought mate - thank you for sharing
Tapering the edges of the wedges might help reduce some of the turbulence.
Nice! I just saw your video on converting wind energy directly to heat. I could see a couple of these scaled up, on my roof to help heat my basement during the winter. Looking forward to more videos. :)
cheers mate
Another great video! You have motivated me to have a go at building one and experiment with the results! Thanks as always!
please do and please share - this would be an interesting investigation
If you were able to line a tube with “feathers”; aka wind resonance blades; and mount the wind funnel to drive the air down the tube and agitate the feathers, each little agitation generating a wee bit of energy, collect it and use it.
interesting
Wonderful. Another possible slight improvement would be to mount a savonious VAWT on top with an axle extending beyond the air collector zone. This axle would have an exhaust fan mounted. As the VAWT turned, it would push down the wind in the pipe causing a partial vaccum behind it. This would encourage more air to be sucked in as the wind blows about. Please try it out. Thanks
or you could and do a video on it mate
finally - we have recreated an Arabian house type of windcatcher. - avoiding" turbulence / stall / stagnation at the entry maintains dynamic capture of the airstream.
cheers mate
A Dyson vacuum uses a wind vortex. It spins the wind to make a stronger force. Can you print the pie wedge on the inside with a spiral?
I would think so
@@ThinkingandTinkering what if you put a propeller in the center on the inside.
Great achievement,,congratulations..
Thanks a lot
Amazing!! Thank you for sharing!!
As per usual you’ve done it again…(and I love cheesey wedges)…ya bloody genius…..I love loonies.
lololol
Great project can't wait to see the next video test
cheers mate
Can also use an upside down airofoil on top to create low pressure on top and draw the air up like a Venturi...
with adding along the vertex of the wedge deflector at one end, a parabolic curve to aid the bending/changing of the direction of the airflow. similar concept to the curved air intake and exhaust manifolds on a vehicle engine can improve efficiency.
cheers mate
Here's the thing about flat panels is that it is easy to make them larger. This is really good news. It means that regular people can make these large enough to handle useful amounts of wind. Great discovery!
my thoughts exactly mate!
0:54 months ago I heard something about a Wind turbines where you have the rotors and the generator isn't in the condle but is transmitted by a belt to the generator on the ground. More power less vibration
If that was the the support structure for a solar 8 panel array with octovalve style tubes going to each micro inverter it would cool and genrerate at the same time! Winning!
I love your curiosity and enthusiasm. Wouild it make a difference if the DWT directed the air up and you could use thermal convention also? Maybe paint the baffles black? And could you use a Bernouli effect on the top to draw the wind thru??? Maybe the form used in a popular bladeless fan but as a vacuum???
Wonderful! And on the corners of a high building as well, as someone suggested. And why not turn the wind direction upwards, make them out of metal and paint them black to add some chimney effect to it. On a building there wont be a problem to have the rotors high up by the roof. There they are easily serviceable.
I suspect that the "ideal" angle will actually be a section of a parabola.
I also suspect that it might not be worth the extra effort to get there unless you are a factory producing many units.
When you think about it you want the leading edge to be close to the angle of the wind entering the device and the trailing one to be close to the direction of travel you want the air to go in.
Having the central area blocked by a solid barrier is a touch of genius. If there is a small to no gap between the fan blades and the central barrier there will not be any "spillage back up the low pressure down wind side of the device.
Nicely done Sir!
cheers mate - but also - very nice ideas from you - thanks for sharing
@@ThinkingandTinkering You are welcome!
Brilliant solution Boss promising results, well worth further investigation. Good Stuff 🤝🍻
cheers mate - that is how I see it too
need a 1mx1m wall now with a collector of something like 8 into 1 at the base that plumbs the wind into the generator, awesome work Rob.
cheers mate
Absolutely brilliant, well done Rob.
wow thank you mate
Awesome design, really like it.
Thank you very much!
Absolutely stunning, I love the work you do. Have a wonderful day!
cheers mate
Make it black so you generate thermal wind
nice idea mate - cheers
Really good Idea...
Making that in Graphene would be Optimal...
In the desert there are towers they use for cooling, the sun heats up the air and it rises causing air to be drawn into the house causing cooling. If you reduce the outlet dia then that would speed up the velocity, good place to try a generator.
@@antoniopacelli I'm just asking, why would it be optimal if made from graphene?
For that to work efficiently the outlet would have to be on top.
Hvala.
don't you just love it when the answer is so elegant and simple?
yes I do lol
Thanks for sharing these videos. For what it's worth, I've been enjoying your content for a while and particularly these video covering the Darwin wind turbine design. Since you've been experimenting I've been trying to think if it would be possible have the louvres facing downward (from the centre) to give protection from rain ingress whilst still directing the air downwards. I wonder whether that could be achieved using your new internal "baffles" somehow?
Maybe a good cap...a sort of roof.🤔
I am not sure rain is such a worry mate - after all most turbines are up on a pole come wind rain sleet or snow - then of course there are turbines completely submerged - so - a bit of rain - hmmm - not sure I would worry too much about that
This is a great idea that works !
Something to consider is to invert your pie and to add a self aligning chimney cowl to create a more negative pressure and further increase the air draw.
2 of us where talking about this when you posted the last collector
yep
Thanks for the video mate another idea would be to use your wind tunnel as a vent on a chimney? This would increase the draw and stop birds from getting in and stop rain entering 🤔 very interesting 👍🏻
“Honey come quick robert posted again”
lololol
Strange and very interesting, with Darwin's turbine and a cast bronze tube with hard mineral chips embedded, you could drill holes in the Giza plateau ;-)
Wonderful ,I'm going out to take a serious look at louvre doors and the ventian blinds in the shed
go for it mate
This is fantastic
cheers mate
Really nice. You plan to converge each pieces of the pie in the same pipe to one turbine ... if yes this get a chance to air to get back to one pieces of pie with less pressure ( backward to the wind ). The other options is like you already do with the pc fan , each pieces of the pie only blow on a section of the turbine ( pc fan in this case ) or having turbine for each pieces of the pie. Also , what about making the airflow go up , paint the whole thing in black and use the generated heat from the sun and convection of the air as a combined extra power added ? Wind and Solar power.I already thinking about it few years ago but not this way.
Oh, I thought it was the Darwin who found out that men were formerly apes. 🤣
Your invention is very impressive! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
Fantastic work! I hope to make one some day
giving it a go
Even I could have a go at making one of these, it looks like a “piece of cake”.
lol - go for it mate
you must dream all this stuff in your sleep rob fab idea well done
lolol - I do!!
I believe you would want to leave the top (or bottom depending on the direction of flow) uncapped to avoid creating a vacuum at speed. When you showed the test with the smoke I immediately thought of the chimney flue of the waste oil burner my brother and I created and thought of the possibility of the draft going up the flue and spinning a prop to generate electricity. Of course there’s the high heat there to contend with…but how cool would it be to generate heat and electricity at the same time in the winter.
I plan on putting a top on mate - but I can see what you are saying
Just a thought Rob, How about several fans down the length of pipe to maximise the air flow. Granted the force further down the tube would be less due to the drag coefficient. but could give a reasonable return of power ???? I'll put it on my to do list. lol
How about putting it on top of a flue pipe so the wind forces the heated air in the flue pipe out faster, giving a stronger air flow through , say a rocket mass heater giving a better burn. I'm building one at t6he moment in my greenhouse, so i will try this one out.
Awesome.
awesome mate - please share your results
Will try making one Sir and report back soon I hope.
Very interesting concept
Bloomin awesome!
cheers mate
Excellent that internal structure will stop loosing the air collected & greatly increase strength but if you remove one of the walls from sections each section would be one wall for the next section & remove a large amount of material with out reduction in strength.
good suggestion mate - cheers
That's great Robert, now check out this new propeller design that could be tried out on your turbine 🙂
toroidal propellers?
@@ThinkingandTinkering yes you're spot on, I thought I put up the link but maybe I forgot
Building on the Venturi effect idea, if properly designed could a series of constrictions>air inlets>dilations in the pipe (theoretically increasing airflow by adding atmospheric air through pressure differential) allow you to:
A) Offset the drag allowing you to extend the pipe length?
B) Increase the amount of air flowing downwards?
I'm sure I'm missing something here, if you know what that is please inform me. Otherwise I'd love to test this or to see Rob do so
I don't know mate
@@ThinkingandTinkering well I very much appreciate the response anyway! Love your work Rob and excited to see where you go with this design
I'm interested to see test results in actual wind.
Have 8 separate cavity "slices" might be a problem because only 2 to 4 slices on the front will get positive wind pressure (wind going in) but the rest of the slices on the sides and rear will likely have negative wind pressure and the air may bleed out...
I agree, thought the same.
My thoughts exactly.
it may - but my thinking was a wells turbine would answer that - or just point it at one side and shield the other
@@ThinkingandTinkering .. what about internal flap valving, a single structure like your earlier model but with the vanes as simple flap valves so air can only go in one side but the opposite side will be closed?
Very cool rob, I would think maybe a tiny bit of a funnel kind of thing to do a kind of water turgo system and have a funnel for each segment
nice
You will probably find that the down wind side will also suck air out of the centre. So if you link the up wind and down wind sides together you might get a bigger air flow
yes - I was thinking that too
Great idea but I see a problem because of no moving parts. The wind is typically going to be funneling air down 2 or 3 segments of the cheesewheel but the turbine is connected to all 5, 6, 7 or whatever number. This means that the air from the pressurised side of the wheel will be pulling air from the low pressure side of the wheel.
wells turbine
I'd like to see more content about head batteries, or to be more exact about the way to cheaply transfer the heat from really hot mass. Sand could be heated to couple hundread degrees C, but transfering this heat to something more usable could be a problem.
there is not a lot to say about them mate - use a heat exchanger
Brilliant
Thanks
wow - thank you mate!
Now we need to come up with a clever way of keeping the air and ditching the rain water, although there are probably good industrial designs that can already do that, an inexpensive way would be a step forward for the home gamers.
most turbines are up in the air in wind rain sleet and snow - I doubt it matters that much tbh mate
I suppose it wouldn’t be too much trouble to have the turbine inside the air shaft and the generator outside of it with a belt or chain connecting them so that the electrical stuff can stay relatively dry... I know the commercial wind stuff is able to handle weather but if we build some cheap medium scale equipment ourselves from salvaged parts or hand build components and whatnot, I’m going to assume it wouldn’t last too long if it were totally exposed to lots of rainwater all the time, I’ve definitely experienced problems with that, even at low voltage.
This thing is awesome, I can imagine a swirl generated at the right spot in there to create the vortex from previous videos and make the wind go down over a hump with a hole in the top like those bladeless dyson fans, sucking more in. Hope u share the 3D stl,s when ready. Thumbs up!
happy to share mate
I think this design will suck extra air in from the sides that are not directly in the wind. but we would have to do some more testing.
That's a great breakthrough. I'm going to build one out of aluminum 2 ft in diameter
I think that 33.5 Degrees is actually close to the perfect variable in the equation.
This is such a cool idea! If you combined it with your cone-shaped wind turbine (positioned right below the airflow-concentrating pipe's end), it could be interesting :)
I thought this was a smoking gun discovery.... Then I saw the straw 😂
Looking forward to the next episode, a great example of your engineering nous!
cheers mate
Hate to throw cold water on this but the problem is going to be that the leeward side is going to suck air through its cheesy wedge pulling the air pressure away from your turbine at the bottom.
This is why you have to have some mechanical flaps to prevent the downwind side from sucking the air pressure out of the Tower instead of it going down the turbine.
lol - ah mate - thought about that - put a wells turbine on the bottom
Wow a two-four....
You also have a genius "rain water collector"....
Which I'm definitely drawing up right now to implement into my off-grid power system.
This could be great for house ventilation too 👍
for sure
I think you might not be modeling the air resistance during operation quite right. I think in practice, the inertia cost of changing the wind direction will slow that air unduly and air molecules will pile up as a buffer around the apparatus, creating a pressure zone and air that would have entered will instead just take the path of least resistance and flow around it. It will work, but will if work as well as a cowled prop that orients itself to the wind? I doubt it.
no worries - we all have our ideas - I disagree with yours for good reasons of my own - cheers
How about taking it a step further by having the inside wall twist around as it directs the wind up/down toward the propeller? This may help keep the wind moving steadily with less turbulence.
interesting idea mate - cheers
The idea to put the walls internally to prevent the air from moving across is quite good. I recommend increasing the spacing between the slats... when the slats are too close together it creates a lot of air friction and you won't get as much air flow.
cheers mate - I was pondering that