Wind Turbine Water Feature
ENGR3330 Mechanical Design
Mihir Vemuri, Kai Scott, Emery Lauer, Tabitha Davison, Rohan Giancaspro
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Mission of the project
Mission of the project
The goal of this project is to create a beautiful, decorative piece of engineering for the O, which, due to its structure, acts as a wind tunnel.
We designed, analyzed, and fabricated a wind turbine that powers a small water pump feeding a unique water feature arrangement.
Project Overview
Project Overview
Power from the blades is transferred through a belt and pulley system to a single-stage gearbox, both designed to increase the RPM to the input shaft of the gear pump.
Tubing from the output of the gear pump extends to the highest water feature and then trickles through the other elements before returning to the reservoir.
The structure is steel with triangulated, TIG welded legs to ensure structural integrity.
Functional Requirements
Functional Requirements
Be able to run a cosmetic water fountain
Implement pump mechanism to power water fountain
Minimize frictional/parasitic losses and reach a minimum efficiency of 90%
Fully mechanical system
Wind Blades
Wind Blades
The actual turbine blades power our entire system by catching wind, providing a certain amount of output RPM, Torque, and Power. We designed the blades to maximize the amount of energy captured in the blade design software QBlade.
Transmission
Transmission
The blades spin a shaft with a pulley that drives a timing belt. The timing belt is driving a smaller pulley with a 2:1 ratio to increase rpm. The smaller pulley's output leads to a 4:1 gear ratio, which attaches to and drives the pump.
Water Pump
Water Pump
We designed an external gear pump to bring water in from the reservoir and circulate to the top of our fountain. The pump required tight tolerances and uses two gears spun at a fast RPM to pump water.
Water Fountain
Water Fountain
We chose the pots pouring into each other style of fountain because its a simple elegant fountain design that has been proven to work in other fountains. We also designed both the return drain and feed tube for the top of the fountain to be hidden out of sight to maintain a clean neat appearence.
BOM
BOM
Future Work
Future Work
In the future, to make this design work more efficiently, we will make the blades significantly larger to produce more torque to drive the pump. In combination with this, budget allowing, we would also purchase or fabricate metal gears for the pumps to run smoothly. For design and aesthetic purposes, we would also use real terracotta or bronze for the pots on the water fountain. We would also redesign the reservoir and pump area to make it more aesthetically pleasing and easier to assemble. In addition, we would start assembly earlier to ensure that everything aligns as should.
Conclusion
Conclusion
In conclusion, we all learned a lot through this project. It was difficult to go from so many options in our blade design and output system, but through testing, research and analysis, we managed to narrow down to a project we all found really cool and looks beautiful. Unfortunately, each components only works individually, but we created something we're proud to show.
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