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Advanced Wind Turbine Design
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Advanced Wind Turbine Design
A coastal community in Australia is planning a wind turbine. Use your knowledge of forces and motion to investigate how the turbine works and make a design recommendation. Show working for calculations.
Investigate the forces
Use the scenario and your science knowledge to explain what makes a turbine start, speed up or slow down.
1.The wind pushes the blades and they begin to rotate. Which statement best explains this change in motion?
- The wind force is unbalanced, so it causes the blades to accelerate.
- The blades move because gravity pulls them around the hub.
- Air resistance makes the blades accelerate in the direction of rotation.
- The blades have no forces acting on them once they start moving.
2.At a steady wind speed, a turbine blade turns at a constant speed. True or false: the forces on the moving blade are balanced overall.
TrueFalse
3.A turbine blade tip moves in a circle with a radius of 40 m. Explain why the blade tip is accelerating even when the turbine turns at a constant speed.
4.A test turbine has a mass of 600 kg. Its support experiences a resultant force of 1,200 N when the turbine begins to move. Use F = ma to calculate its acceleration.
5.The turbine rotor completes 15 revolutions in 30 seconds. Calculate its rotation rate in revolutions per second.
6.Complete each match by pairing the turbine feature with the force or motion effect it is most closely linked to.
- Curved blade shape
- Brake system
- Blade turning around the hub
- Wind pushing on the blade
- Provides a force that slows or stops rotation
- Can cause the rotor to accelerate
- Helps the wind transfer force to the rotor
- Circular motion
Test and improve a design
Use evidence from the turbine scenario to evaluate design choices and plan a safer, more effective system.
7.On a very windy day, the rotor spins faster than its safe operating speed. Name one force or mechanism that could reduce its speed, and explain how it changes the rotor's motion.
8.A designer is choosing between flat blades and curved aerofoil blades. Recommend one design for a turbine that needs to rotate efficiently in ordinary winds. Explain how the blade shape affects the forces on the rotor.
9.In a model test, the rotor turns 20 times in 40 seconds with one blade design, and 30 times in 40 seconds with another. Calculate each rotation rate and state how much faster the second design turns.
10.Sketch a wind turbine designed for a gusty coastal site. Label the blades, hub and tower, then add arrows to show the wind's push and one feature that could help control the rotor in strong winds.
3 printable pages
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