Abstract
Wind turbines are an efficient method to generate electrical energy without the pollution of gas and chemical compounds into the environment. Turbine blades are the most important facet of the turbine, taking wind energy and converting it into electrical energy. Wind speed data was collected for North Texas to determine the wind velocity to experiment with prototyped wind blades. Eight different NACA profiles were chosen, from NACA 2408 - 2424, to measure the stresses and vibrational frequencies as these characteristics are two major variables affecting wind turbine power production. The eight wind blades were 3D printed with ABS filament and attached to strain gauges and piezoelectric vibrational sensors. The sensor and blade assembly was then placed into a wind tunnel to measure the magnitude of strain and amplitude of vibrations at five different angles of attack and eight different wind speed velocities for each NACA 24 blade. Data from the wind turbine blades were compared against each blade to determine the optimum blade with desirable aspects of low-frequency amplitude, low strain magnitude, and high RPMs relative to the maximum percent thickness of the airfoil to conclude which NACA 24 blade design in this study has the highest energy production possible.
