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Wind Turbine Blades
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Harnessing power from the wind isn't limited to paragliders, windsurfers, kite boarders, sailors, and blimps but these sports have contributed greatly to the evolution of effective wind turbine blades for generating electricity. Sports enthusiasts should be happy that wind power is becoming more prevalent because technical developments in that field often trickle back down to the sporting market with greatly improved designs.
Although wind powered mills have been around for a long time, it wasn't until the first person set sail into the air on a kite, or attached a sail to surfboard, that man began to feel the true force and potential of the wind. This urge to catch the wind has led to the development of bigger and better ways of flying that eventually culminated in the plane and spaceship, but also became smaller at the same time and grew into many extreme sports.
The basic principle behind most wind propulsion devices is the Bernoulli principle which states that when a fluid, such as air, is accelerated its pressure is lowered to compensate. The upper surface of the wing is curved while the bottom surface is flat and as a result the air has a bit longer to travel across the upper surface than the bottom. But because the air has to get there at the same time despite the longer travel, it thus has to pick a bit of speed while above the wing and slow down at the end to rejoin the air at the same speed. Faster fluid means less pressure. So, the air above the wing turns into some sort of virtual suction cup, sucking the wing up. The air is thicker underneath the wing.
Wind turbine blades work in much the same way as a wing but instead of the airplanes power plant providing forward acceleration the turbine remains stationary while the wind turns the blades generating completely renewable electricity. The height of the tower, size (or height on a vertical turbine) of the blades, and the speed and density of the wind determines how productive the windmill will be.
Different blade shapes are better for high or low winds making it difficult to harness maximum power in intermittent conditions but new blade research is coming up with ways of altering the shape of the rotors or altering their angle of attack much like a helicopter does when they change from hovering to forward movement. Unfortunately the latter method requires a lot of maintenance and increased cost which deters most homeowners but may be useful on industrial wind farms.
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