Using human centered design and design-by-morphing, the team worked to modify a wind turbine to reduce its impact on the surrounding wildlife, lower its sonic impact, and integrate it into the natural landscape.
MEng Team: Erica Horton, Austin Campbell, Ali Elashri, Chahal Neema
Advising Team: Phil Marcus, Alice Agogino, Tom Flynn
Forty percent of the world’s population lives in coastal regions, which typically have significant wind resource. However, this great wind resource remains untapped due to the perceived negative impacts on community and wildlife in the vicinity.
We combined human centered design and a novel design methodology called Design-by-Morphing to modify a proven wind turbine so that it has minimal impact on wildlife, has low sonic footprint, and is visually acceptable in the natural landscape.
Design-by-morphing allows us to generate novel shapes by combining any number of base shapes, with variable weights to each, to produce a final combined shape with characteristics from each base geometry. Simulations predict a significant gain of close to 20% in terms of power output by modifying shape of the concentrator towards a more concave design and operating at 40 RPM.
*Windpower was the 2018 winner of the Fung Institute Mission Award. This award honors a team that exemplifies the mission of the institute: transforming scientists into leaders who can take risks and develop technical, social, and economic innovations.
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