The True Power of Wind:

The Windmill Generator

The A Team (The A is for Awesome)

Ashley Gleaves (Aerospace Eng)

Korey Hamilton (Power Tool Eng)

Brian Bennett (Mechanical Design Eng)

Lucas Herrera (Electrical Eng)

Objectives

To work as a team to design and construct a working windmill to produce electrical energy to power a LED light.

Apply skills of management and delegation to work smoothly and efficiently.

Plan of Attack

We believe making the simplest machine would suffice and if time permitted we would make improvements to enhance the efficiency of the windmill.

Efficiency Calculations

P= ½(ρ)(Α)(Cp)(V3)(Ng)(Nb)V=9.4 (m/s)A= 6” radius

Management

Each member of the team was delegated leader of a certain task, as stated by the Gantt Chart. By using the Gantt Chart we were able to keep all team members busy.

Once each task was finish each member had a chance too critic that leaders work. Then once a consensus is met the task was deemed complete.

Design & Construction

Our first design consisted of spinning magnets around the outside of the coil of wire.

Our second design we tried a different approach by rotating the magnets on a spinning disc while the coil lies beside the rotating disc.

Our third design was more traditional and rotates the magnets inside of a coil (wire wrapped around cds)

Setbacks and Failures

Making Electricity

First design flaws: Three sets of poles cancel each other out, also spinning magnets on the outside produced no electricity

Secondly, we concluded that our magnets were not strong enough to produce the required voltage.

We bought new magnets and we were on our way to a working generator!

Success & Conclusion

Finally the bulb was lit with our third design.

the most important design aspects are The proximity of the magnets to the coilThe amount of coilsThe strength and rotation of the magnets

Our generator produced ~.4 volts at ~100rpm and consistently lit the LED during testing