Project Testing

Test Bench

For testing of procedures and equipment, data was measured by using Dr. Kipple's Electric Drives equipment, shown in Our Proposal, with dSPACE ControlDesk software to control the permanent-magnet DC (PMDC) motor and MATLAB software to produce desired plots.

Wind Tunnel Testing

To do more in-depth testing, and get a better idea of how our turbine will function in the real world, we were able to gain access to a wind tunnel in Flagstaff. Usning this wind tunnel, we tested our system with and without a gearbox, up and down wind, and with different electrical component setups: open-circuit, loaded, and DC grid output.

From these tests, we gained a lot of data, and were faced with more design challenges, as mentioned elsewhere: we needed higher RPMs to get a usable voltage output, out rectifier has too high of a voltage drop, we need the current blades to get a good cut-in, but need different blades to get higher RPMs, we are unable to use a gearbox due to the amount of torque required to turn the motor, etc.

Here is a picture down the wind tunnel with the turbine on its mount: