The Random Thoughts of a Geek heading for Banbury
The Random Thoughts of a Geek heading for Banbury

#Makevember Post 04 – Turbine Blades – Attempt number two

Following on from my Makevember post yesterday, where I tried to make turbine blades, and Failed…

I fed 6050 from SG6050 into Fusion 360 and this is what it gave me:

SG6050 profile SG6050 profile

To check it wasnt it that was broken, I ran the script with the defult value of ‘2412’ and it worked, so hmmmmm.

2412 Profile 2412 Profile

Apparently had I read further down the pages of SG6050 and SG6051 I would have found the airfoils in diffrent formats.

However… They were not the correct format for the plugin, so back to the Drawing board / CAD space.

Looking round the internet I found this Airfoil DAT to Spline tool. The instructional screencast is:

After exporting the Text in the blue ‘Dat file’ box on SG6050 page and pasting it into a text file (I have called it ‘SG6050.DAT’ (The uppercase DAT is important)), and running the tool:

SG6050 Success SG6050 Success

Now by adjusting the cord length and then extending the trailing edge till they intersect I will try to make my blade following Michael’s design:

Blade Design

Hmmm, now those of you playing along at home will spot a problem with that plan… the above drawing does not contain enough information, it was a good enough reference when I was tracing, however it doesnt work now I am using the generator.

So Plan B

I found Peter J. Schubel and Richard J. Crossley’s “Wind Turbine Blade Design” document, and looking through to Figure 8 gives me a good starting point:

Luckly The Aeronautical Research Institute of Sweden have produced a big book of all the FFA-W1, W2, and W3 (FFA TN 1990-15 v.1-2 c.1) series of airfoils which has the FFA-W3-301, and Github has DU93-W-210.

The plugin complains my file format is wrong. So at this point I am going to give up again 🙁 but I can try again soon.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *