Environmental Engineering Reference
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9.7
From Sail Blades to Wooden Blades
Meanwhile I finished building my own wind turbine, of 15 kW
with a 9 m rotor. It was not such a great success as the one we
built at Karl Erik's. The machinery did work well, but the sail blades
were a bad disappointment in full size. The air inside the sails was
forced out towards the tips because of the centrifugal force, and
when the wind turbine was operating normally the outboard part
of the blade pufed so much out, that in practice it destroyed the
aerodynamic profile. At the same time the inmost part of the wink
was sucked almost completely flat. In principle opening the blade
at the outer and the inner end faces could solve the problem, but
the only thing obtained by that would be that the rotor became one
big centrifugal pump for air and would not produce any serious
power. After many vain attempts I had to swallow the bitter pill
and replace the sail blades with some home-brewed wooden
blades. With those blades the wind turbine ran until 1991.
Figure 9.5
Installation and testing of the prototype windmill, 1978.
In late spring of 1979 Karl Erik wanted to go on with things.
The prototype wind turbine ran well, and with air brakes as well
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