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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
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!
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. :)
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
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
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%.
@@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.
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
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 👍🏻
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
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.
finally - we have recreated an Arabian house type of windcatcher. - avoiding" turbulence / stall / stagnation at the entry maintains dynamic capture of the airstream.
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 :)
Brilliant Robert. Just a thought, may be a good or bad idea, I don't know. If you either: Put one big funnel under the entire 'pie', leading to a turbine. Or, a funnel under each of the 'pie' sections, feeding it's own turbine.
Well done yet again Rob very inciteful and briliant You mentioned the venturi lower down how about making it on the top of the pipe and making the darwin collector bigger then you can use a smaller diameter pipe that would be cheeper and have less wind resistace
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 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.
The Lunar Club, Darwin (E) also came up with the steering system you use on a modern vehicles after a horse and carriage accident on the way back from one of their meetings. Very clever chap. A side thought should you build these at scale, I would look at a sectional design that is assembled from molded units. You need just 2/3 tools. (Don't put pairs in the tool you'll end with issues as one produces more good parts than the other) Make it out of fibre reinforced regrind. It's not impact structural and you'll get some really funky colour patterns. PS an earlier video showed some great potential for horizontal, that could be interesting running along a ridge top
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.
A variant I seen while I was watching your video is that the upper slates would be longer and the lower ones shorter, to help reduce turbulence and make a laminar flow and maybe give it a round shape so the upper ones can bend the flow seemlessly and the lower ones still at 35 degrees and the mid ones stopping at different level since you can't keep the curb from top to bottom without creating a restriction.
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.
Very cool. I much appreciate the fact that your willing to think out-of-the-box with every project that you do, it makes it so much easier for everyone to replicate it without having to go through the trial and error especially if you have limited resources. Although I'm not a big fan of Darwin, I can still appreciate some of his ideas. Because I am a big fan of Tesla and all of the great ideas they had, I wonder if his turbine model could be used to make a wind turbine that operates in much the same fashion but has a tail fin to keep the turbine entrance facing the wind and a Tesla check valve at the bottom to keep the air flow directed downward from coming back up into the turbine 🤔
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.
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???
Kris Harbour created a coanda grille to direct his water, you could do the same method with your angled pieces. Create your plywood triangle, then router grooves at 30 degree angles into the side panels and slide in your favourite builders board strips... suddenly youve scaled up in size
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?
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
Very interesting to see. Do you remember the wind deflectors on chimney pots? They used this idea to stop down drafts into chimneys, still alot about. I think the idea looks promising especially to keep all the moving parts at a lower level. I think the science will need to deal with friction in the pipes to reduce losses. Cheers.
For the frictional losses, this is where the venturie will come in increasing the flow. A little fluid dynamics in finite analysis could help show some of the "sticking bits" though .
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 ;-)
If you look at the segmentation of your air collector . . . you could take those segments apart and distribute an appropriate number of them around an existing column, chimney, or tower, and then have multiple fans at the base, or use one large fan with smallish collectors distributed in a ring above the ends of its vanes, again with some central structure. This might add power generation to existing columns (chimneys, flagpoles, support structures) and/or increase collection area at little additional cost, while removing the need for a tall stack of collectors to be structurally self-sufficient.
Very clever. It's a sort of one-way tube for air. I wonder if it can be used to vent hot air from the roof cavity to provide additional cooling in hot climates. Or even as an improved chimney design.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
Fascinating. What is the optimum height of the louvred section (~number of louvres) to drive a pipe/fan of a given diameter? Should the fan (turbine) blade angle be 35° too? What should be done with the exhaust air?
Bl...y brilliant epiphany Robert. I like simple and this is simple.... The only suggestion I can make - and it's minor (and personal)... it seems the better angle would be 33.33*: purely because that angle 'feels' right.... lol Great work mate - keep the ideas (and epiphanies coming)!
That's really great that Rob, it did occur to me that it may be possible to get the air to spin (think Dyson vacuum) before it hit the turbine blade.. Have no idea if it would make it any better - just a thought. Thanks 👍
If you're up for a bit of optimizing, I would certainly take advantage of the pressure zones this can harness and incorporate a low pressure frontal opening to assist in higher ambient pressure pushing itself into the intake areas and accelerate it up your runners, then open the exhaust area and incorporate a vertical twist through the body. While doing this by hand, flat panels are much easier to build, however, air prefers to travel on smooth surfaces and can be impeded by sharp contours, so much so that boundary layers can incur turbulence and hence reducing efficiency. The beauty of the 3d printer is that it can be designed in such a way that the optimum shape can be achieved and printed quite easily, of which can later be dismantled at larger scale for reproduction via sectioning. And better yet in your CAD program, you only have to make one really great chamber, then place an automated copy/paste routine of how many ever you can fit on the circumference while running a rotation on your z axis. Easy peasy venturi squeezy. 👍
Not sure about anyone else, but I'm having a hard time following your description. Are you suggesting another intake before the flaps that would accelerate the air? Would that be any better than just adding more flaps and making it bigger? And are you sure it's not already doing that? Think about it, if the size of the "cheese wedge" is constant, and each flap introduces more air, the air inside the wedge would have to accelerate as it moves toward the end, right? Don't mean to say you're wrong necessarily, I don't know. It would be interesting to get some readings inside the body to see what the pressure and velocity are doing. Maybe a helical flap structure could induce a vortex and make it flow better, but that would mean getting rid of the internal partitions. Would it lose air out the other side? Guess someone's just gonna have to try it. :P
@@DFPercush I've used my rough description once before as a sort of modern day Francis turbine on steroids that is more based on the operating principle of it but not so much in design; I may be able to modify my solidworks design if it would be of use, though for this, a fresh design would be more practical. Basically the idea is to create a converging/diverging air passage using larger frontal openings on the horizontal plane at the base (x axis if you will) that converge using the top and bottom surfaces of the runners while also rotating upwards around the z axis and expanding after the converging point, developing a low pressure zone inside the mouth that will be accelerated as it travels up through the 'spiral'. Perhaps a better visual reference would be to take a compressor wheel and lay it on the x axis back-side down, build a few stacked layers and start the transition where the blades begin to taper towards the vertical, then wrap and expand the upper section that would be the exhaust runners wider at the top than the intake at the bottom. In side profile it would have an S shape but dramatically flared towards the top from the convergence point up. Stacking can still be achieved, however there will be a useful limit with the conical inner section, at which point the upper stages would impinge on reducing returns into the flow volume.
to be honest mate and with he idea of simplicity in mind I was thinking of just sticking a wells turbine at the bottom - I get what you are saying but optimisation comes after to my mind and what I want first is a result then we can work on improving it - key criteria are cost, simplicity and robustness
![KSI - Dirty [Official Visualiser]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VoDh1h1dPUE/mqdefault.jpg)
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.
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.
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
It was very joyful to see your excitement and appreciate all you do for the community looking forward to building one
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
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
Slick. Thanks. Fooling around, tinkering really does work. Proof is the pie. Again, thanks.
lol - I agree mate !!
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
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
That is truly awesome, actually blown away how simple and effective your solution is, genius
Respect from Africa 🇿🇦
Great work Rob, thanks for sharing your discovery with us! 🙌
glad you liked it mate
Hvala.
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
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!
Always great info. Thank you Robert
cheers mate
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 is simple brilliance Rob. I appreciate that 👍🏻
thank you 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
Thanks for upgrade, you are inspiring!
Absolutely brilliant, well done Rob.
wow thank you 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!
thank you a million times. this is brilliant.
Thanks
wow - thank you mate!
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 stunning, I love the work you do. Have a wonderful day!
cheers mate
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
Great achievement,,congratulations..
Thanks a lot
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.
Has the resemblance of a starwars/startrek craft of some kind . Nice work putting the louvers inside
cheers mate
Wonderful ,I'm going out to take a serious look at louvre doors and the ventian blinds in the shed
go for it 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
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
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
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 project can't wait to see the next video test
cheers mate
Brilliant solution Boss promising results, well worth further investigation. Good Stuff 🤝🍻
cheers mate - that is how I see it too
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.
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
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
As per usual you’ve done it again…(and I love cheesey wedges)…ya bloody genius…..I love loonies.
lololol
Amazing!! Thank you for sharing!!
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
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!
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.
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.
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 👍🏻
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
Awesome design, really like it.
Thank you very much!
Fantastic work! I hope to make one some day
giving it a go
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.
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
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
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 :)
don't you just love it when the answer is so elegant and simple?
yes I do lol
Brilliant Robert.
Just a thought, may be a good or bad idea, I don't know.
If you either:
Put one big funnel under the entire 'pie', leading to a turbine.
Or, a funnel under each of the 'pie' sections, feeding it's own turbine.
you know me mate - I will try both lol
Well done yet again Rob very inciteful and briliant You mentioned the venturi lower down how about making it on the top of the pipe and making the darwin collector bigger then you can use a smaller diameter pipe that would be cheeper and have less wind resistace
nice one mate - cheers
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 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
The Lunar Club, Darwin (E) also came up with the steering system you use on a modern vehicles after a horse and carriage accident on the way back from one of their meetings. Very clever chap.
A side thought should you build these at scale, I would look at a sectional design that is assembled from molded units. You need just 2/3 tools. (Don't put pairs in the tool you'll end with issues as one produces more good parts than the other)
Make it out of fibre reinforced regrind. It's not impact structural and you'll get some really funky colour patterns.
PS an earlier video showed some great potential for horizontal, that could be interesting running along a ridge top
yes he did - nice one mate - cheers
That's plain awesome 👏
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
This is a great idea that works !
A variant I seen while I was watching your video is that the upper slates would be longer and the lower ones shorter, to help reduce turbulence and make a laminar flow and maybe give it a round shape so the upper ones can bend the flow seemlessly and the lower ones still at 35 degrees and the mid ones stopping at different level since you can't keep the curb from top to bottom without creating a restriction.
I like the fact that the mechanical part is not up in the air. even if the ducting limits the energy it produce it could still be interesting.
nice suggestions mate - cheers
That's a great breakthrough. I'm going to build one out of aluminum 2 ft in diameter
Haha, Balls? What a Brain you have Brother!!!! Thanks for sharing ur ideas with us...
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
Will try making one Sir and report back soon I hope.
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
Very cool. I much appreciate the fact that your willing to think out-of-the-box with every project that you do, it makes it so much easier for everyone to replicate it without having to go through the trial and error especially if you have limited resources. Although I'm not a big fan of Darwin, I can still appreciate some of his ideas. Because I am a big fan of Tesla and all of the great ideas they had, I wonder if his turbine model could be used to make a wind turbine that operates in much the same fashion but has a tail fin to keep the turbine entrance facing the wind and a Tesla check valve at the bottom to keep the air flow directed downward from coming back up into the turbine 🤔
interesting idea there mate
Can also use an upside down airofoil on top to create low pressure on top and draw the air up like a Venturi...
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.
you must dream all this stuff in your sleep rob fab idea well done
lolol - I do!!
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???
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
Kris Harbour created a coanda grille to direct his water, you could do the same method with your angled pieces. Create your plywood triangle, then router grooves at 30 degree angles into the side panels and slide in your favourite builders board strips... suddenly youve scaled up in size
nice
Even I could have a go at making one of these, it looks like a “piece of cake”.
lol - go for it mate
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 could be great for house ventilation too 👍
for sure
This is great I don't have a 3d printer bot I do have a large stack of used vinyl siding from a remodeling project and a table saw.
nice! now you have a plan too lol
@@ThinkingandTinkering I love this comment group this project has gained 10 percent more in 10 hours since I first posted
Very interesting to see. Do you remember the wind deflectors on chimney pots? They used this idea to stop down drafts into chimneys, still alot about. I think the idea looks promising especially to keep all the moving parts at a lower level. I think the science will need to deal with friction in the pipes to reduce losses. Cheers.
For the frictional losses, this is where the venturie will come in increasing the flow. A little fluid dynamics in finite analysis could help show some of the "sticking bits" though .
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 ;-)
If you look at the segmentation of your air collector . . . you could take those segments apart and distribute an appropriate number of them around an existing column, chimney, or tower, and then have multiple fans at the base, or use one large fan with smallish collectors distributed in a ring above the ends of its vanes, again with some central structure. This might add power generation to existing columns (chimneys, flagpoles, support structures) and/or increase collection area at little additional cost, while removing the need for a tall stack of collectors to be structurally self-sufficient.
clever mate - nice one
2 of us where talking about this when you posted the last collector
yep
Very clever. It's a sort of one-way tube for air. I wonder if it can be used to vent hot air from the roof cavity to provide additional cooling in hot climates. Or even as an improved chimney design.
I like the thinking mate and now I wonder the same thing!
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
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
Very interesting concept
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.
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
Fascinating. What is the optimum height of the louvred section (~number of louvres) to drive a pipe/fan of a given diameter? Should the fan (turbine) blade angle be 35° too? What should be done with the exhaust air?
no idea lol
This is fantastic
cheers mate
Bl...y brilliant epiphany Robert. I like simple and this is simple.... The only suggestion I can make - and it's minor (and personal)... it seems the better angle would be 33.33*: purely because that angle 'feels' right.... lol Great work mate - keep the ideas (and epiphanies coming)!
I read a couple of research papers that suggested 35 degrees mate which is why I went with it - but I get what you mean!
That's really great that Rob, it did occur to me that it may be possible to get the air to spin (think Dyson vacuum) before it hit the turbine blade.. Have no idea if it would make it any better - just a thought.
Thanks 👍
That will happen automatically to some degree if there is a fan-blade of the rotary type added to the end. Swirl will be created that way.
it's a good thought mate - cheers
If you're up for a bit of optimizing, I would certainly take advantage of the pressure zones this can harness and incorporate a low pressure frontal opening to assist in higher ambient pressure pushing itself into the intake areas and accelerate it up your runners, then open the exhaust area and incorporate a vertical twist through the body. While doing this by hand, flat panels are much easier to build, however, air prefers to travel on smooth surfaces and can be impeded by sharp contours, so much so that boundary layers can incur turbulence and hence reducing efficiency. The beauty of the 3d printer is that it can be designed in such a way that the optimum shape can be achieved and printed quite easily, of which can later be dismantled at larger scale for reproduction via sectioning. And better yet in your CAD program, you only have to make one really great chamber, then place an automated copy/paste routine of how many ever you can fit on the circumference while running a rotation on your z axis. Easy peasy venturi squeezy. 👍
Not sure about anyone else, but I'm having a hard time following your description. Are you suggesting another intake before the flaps that would accelerate the air? Would that be any better than just adding more flaps and making it bigger? And are you sure it's not already doing that? Think about it, if the size of the "cheese wedge" is constant, and each flap introduces more air, the air inside the wedge would have to accelerate as it moves toward the end, right? Don't mean to say you're wrong necessarily, I don't know. It would be interesting to get some readings inside the body to see what the pressure and velocity are doing. Maybe a helical flap structure could induce a vortex and make it flow better, but that would mean getting rid of the internal partitions. Would it lose air out the other side? Guess someone's just gonna have to try it. :P
@@DFPercush I've used my rough description once before as a sort of modern day Francis turbine on steroids that is more based on the operating principle of it but not so much in design; I may be able to modify my solidworks design if it would be of use, though for this, a fresh design would be more practical. Basically the idea is to create a converging/diverging air passage using larger frontal openings on the horizontal plane at the base (x axis if you will) that converge using the top and bottom surfaces of the runners while also rotating upwards around the z axis and expanding after the converging point, developing a low pressure zone inside the mouth that will be accelerated as it travels up through the 'spiral'.
Perhaps a better visual reference would be to take a compressor wheel and lay it on the x axis back-side down, build a few stacked layers and start the transition where the blades begin to taper towards the vertical, then wrap and expand the upper section that would be the exhaust runners wider at the top than the intake at the bottom. In side profile it would have an S shape but dramatically flared towards the top from the convergence point up. Stacking can still be achieved, however there will be a useful limit with the conical inner section, at which point the upper stages would impinge on reducing returns into the flow volume.
to be honest mate and with he idea of simplicity in mind I was thinking of just sticking a wells turbine at the bottom - I get what you are saying but optimisation comes after to my mind and what I want first is a result then we can work on improving it - key criteria are cost, simplicity and robustness
@@ThinkingandTinkering Fair and valid points!
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.
That should work very well as a back draft preventer to keep smoke from blowing back down a chimney on a windy winter day.
nice
Oh, I thought it was the Darwin who found out that men were formerly apes. 🤣
Your invention is very impressive! 👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻