ECO/ENERGY: Bladeless Wind Turbines?

[dewline]

This could be both useful and helpful.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/16/good-vibrations-bladeless-turbines-could-bring-wind-power-to-your-home

Comments

[frandroid]

I wish they explained how they work.

[dewline]

I'd expect there'll be something in the USPTO and/or CIPO databases re: the relevant patents somewhere.

[armiphlage]

Von Kármán vortex eddy streets - we spent like a month studying those horrible things in fluid dynamics class.

Imagine you are standing on a crowded sidewalk, facing thousands of people walking towards you. The people represent air or water. Theoretically, you'd only have people bump into the front of you. In real life, you also get jostled from side to side.

As crowds of people (and fluid flow) is never perfectly uniform, someone's elbow bumps against your right side, shoving you to your left. That moves you enough that you bump into someone on your left side, which shoves you to your right. If the people are walking towards you at just the wrong speed, you'll be bounced back and forth uncontrollably.

If you are a flagpole, bridge, or a smokestack, this is a bad thing, as you'll vibrate yourself to pieces. Much of fluid dynamics class was spent learning how to PREVENT this behaviour (i.e. adding strakes) rather than causing it.

If you have something moving back and forth a short distance at a fairly constant frequency, there are several ways that you can extract power. A crankshaft can turn it into rotary motion (efficient, but mechanical parts are expensive and prone to wear), or you can use piezoelectric materials to directly create electricity (inefficient, but cheap and low maintenance).

[dewline]

Good to have that explanation. I don't think I ever got that far with high school physics, sadly.

[armiphlage]

It's fourth year mechanical engineering, so don't feel bad!

[dewline]

Thanks for this.

Sidebar note: James Hudson would have had to know fluid dynamics in order to build his signature power-suit, right?

[armiphlage]

Quite probably.

[dewline]

Thanks for that also, then!

[armiphlage]

The power output from these will be a LOT less than that from a traditional windmill with blades of the same length. The amount of air interacting with a vibration-style generator is proportional to the length, while the amount of air interacting with rotary blades is proportional to the square of the blade diameter.