Senior Design Project
At Kansas State University, Senior Design Projects are projects for various companies such as Honeywell, Burns & McDonnell, or Garmin. If there are not enough projects provided by various companies and there is need for a project, a campus team may be selected such as SAE Formula or Wildcat Wind Power.
My senior design project was to work with the Wildcat Wind Power team at Kansas State University to design, build, and test a wind turbine for the Department of Energy Collegiate Wind Competition. Wildcat Wind Power had requested that a Senior Design Team be designated to them as they had no mechanical engineers. All the mechanical engineers on the team had graduated the previous year.
(Link to NREL Nation Wind Technology Center: https://www.nrel.gov/nwtc/)
Our team met with leading members and faculty for Wildcat Wind Power to learn just what they needed and wanted in a wind turbine. After some brainstorming, we eventually developed a three bladed horizontal axis wind turbine design. We spent most of our first semester developing this design and solving problems. A large portion of this time was spent designing the blades and the mounting bracket, as well as running various simulations (see bottom of page for pictures and report). We constantly monitored our progress through the use of gantt charts and kept everyone informed with several design reviews and team meetings.
For a brief overview of our determination of tasks and dependencies, check out the gantt chart below.
Here is a cross-section of the Wind Turbine from our 3rd design review.
One of the difficult parts of this project was the actual design of the wind turbine blades. We eventually selected the S835, S833, and S834 airfoils for the different sections of the wind turbine blade. In order to create the blade in Solidworks, we had to rotate each airfoil the appropriate amount. This was accomplished with an excel document utilizing a rotation matrix.
Then each section was created as a curve in SolidWorks.
Finally each section was lofted together to create the overall blade.
Our second semester was spent building the turbine and taking it to local facilities to test its functionality. Along the way we discovered several issues with the wind turbine. One example being that in order to come close to the power output required for points in the competition we needed to gear ratio of 1:2.13 for the motor rpm. We then went to competition with our design and performed all the of tests.
Here are some experimental test results from Wind Tunnel Testing at a Dept. of Agriculture Wind Soils Erosion Lab.
Here are some results from competition:
- Placed 6th overall, 1st in design report.
- Produced 19.5 W of power, a 2437.5% increase in power from last year.
I have also included a later design report and powerpoint that goes in to more detail on the design and testing of the wind turbine as well as showing off the turbine in SolidWorks models. I have also have uploaded a few drawings from early on in the design process.
Senior Design Project Review 4
We also performed several simulations on the Wind Turbine. Here are some pictures and if you would like more detail see the reports below.
Senior Design Simulation Part of Design Report 2
Finally we wrote a number of reports on the results of competition and suggestions for future teams. One of the reports I wrote and highly advocated was the building of our own Wind Tunnel for easy access to testing. I gave a preliminary design and suggestions of materials in order to accomplish this. It was actually completed November 2015.
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