1. By The Hoodlums (aka Marcela, Kaia, and Trin-A-Tee)
Wind Turbine project
By The Hoodlums (aka Marcela, Kaia, and Trin-A-Tee)

2. Why did we choose the blade design that we chose over any other design?

3. 2nd Design 3rd Design 1st Design
We as a team thought of 3 starting blade designs, we went through a full process of elimination to get the perfect blade for this project. Our first idea, we had would not have caught as much wind as the others because it was the smallest of our designs. Our second idea, we had would have been too heavy to even pick up any wind, so in that case we were left with our third choice. Our team decided on our 3rd idea because it wasn’t too big, wasn’t too small, had a good size for it, and picked up a good amount of wind.
2nd Design
3rd Design
1st Design

4. How did we get our blade pitch?

5. The way we got our blade pitch was after a while, many tests, and adjusting of our blades. We first started out with 4 blades all 6 x 15 inches at 40 degrees. We were not satisfied with our results of 29.6 mw. So we then tried 3 blades all adjusted to 20 degrees which gave us 35.6 mw. We knew we could do better so we kept altering our blades until we finally made the decision to make our blades bigger. This decision was to eliminate the gap in the middle that was making us lose a big portion of our wind power. We then made our blades 6 x 20 inches which gave us a great result of mw.

6. What material did we use and why?

7. We originally used cardboard but realized that was weighing our blades down so we switched to plastic blades. The plastic is lighter than the cardboard but still just as strong. This allowed our turbine more potential of catching the wind and giving us the high wind power we wanted to achieve.

8. Final Blade Design

9. Why did we use the stand we used

10. The stand we used is made out of PVC pipes
The stand we used is made out of PVC pipes. We used PVC because they are a very cheap material and very sturdy as a stand for our wind turbine. Included in our stand is a set of gears with a ratio of 1 to 32. When our turbine makes 1 full rotation, the smallest gear closest to the generator spins 32 times.

11. Conclusion
To conclude, we had to go through a variety of different sizes and different shapes to get out desired wind power. We learned that this project has to be done as a team. Anything that is off measurement even by a little bit can make a difference in the results.