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Relating Kinetic Energy Changes to Power Generation in a Mechanical Engineering Wind Turbine Lab

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Conference

2025 ASEE Southeast Conference

Location

Mississippi State University, Mississippi

Publication Date

March 9, 2025

Start Date

March 9, 2025

End Date

March 11, 2025

Conference Session

Professional Papers

Tagged Topic

Professional Papers

Page Count

11

Permanent URL

https://peer.asee.org/54190

Download Count

2

Paper Authors

biography

Chuck H. Margraves University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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Dr. Chuck Margraves is a UC Foundation Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. His current research focus is on STEM Education, particularly in the area of energy sustainability, at the collegiate and high school levels.

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KIDAMBI SREENIVAS University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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Trevor S. Elliott University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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Lance Isaac Rose University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

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Abstract

All mechanical engineering students at XX University are required to take a senior level experimentation lab that covers topics in multiple areas of Mechanics as well as the Thermal Fluid Sciences. The course is taught by two faculty members and consists of a one-hour course followed by a three-hour lab. One of the main goals of this course is to reinforce much of the undergraduate material students have covered in the first three years of the program. Recently, a Wind Turbine experiment was added to the lab that demonstrated the effectiveness of blade orientation to power generation for a range of wind speeds. The work provided in this study seeks to expand the effectiveness of this lab by demonstrating how the change in kinetic energy across the blades, measured using a pitot tube, is converted into rotational power, and finally into electrical power using a generator. One of the benefits of this particular experiment, is that it allows the faculty to introduce both thermal fluid science concepts as well as mechanics in a single experiment, unlike many of the other labs, which tend to focus on only one area. Results showed that the change in kinetic energy across the blades resulted in approximately 77 watts of power, while the average rotational power was measured to be 21 Watts. The electrical power produced was less than 1 watt showing the poor conversion efficiency for this particular generator. The second portion of this study aimed to determine the power generation numerically using the commercially available Computational Fluid Dynamics Software, Fluent. While good agreement was found on the calculated rotational power from the model, changes in kinetic energy where substantially different than those measured. Further work on the computational model is currently being considered.

Margraves, C. H., & SREENIVAS, K., & Elliott, T. S., & Rose, L. I. (2025, March), Relating Kinetic Energy Changes to Power Generation in a Mechanical Engineering Wind Turbine Lab Paper presented at 2025 ASEE Southeast Conference , Mississippi State University, Mississippi. https://peer.asee.org/54190

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