In the first half of this year, the well-known online 3D model sharing platform, Thingiverse, once hosted a design challenge. This competition required the model designed by the participants to “use the power of the windâ€. The game ended on August 2nd, but there were many very interesting designs in the middle of the game. For example, Kyle Carstens, a 28-year-old structural engineer from Illinois, designed a very special wind turbine. Unlike most people in our imagination, this wind is not moving in the wind, but can move in the direction of the wind.
“My car was inspired by the sailboat. With good handling, the sailboat can continue to move despite the headwind,†Kyle Carstens said. “And I’ve been thinking about a mechanism that can move in the opposite direction of the force. Therefore, we completely implemented this concept when designing this car, and created a 3D printed wind turbine that can go forward in the wind."
In order to realize his own ideas, Carstens used Solidworks software to design more than 25 different components to form the car. Some of these components have also undergone multiple iterations. Carstens acknowledges that the current wind turbine requires some skill in assembling it after 3D printing. He is prepared to further simplify its design in later iterations.
As you can see from the pictures and videos, Carstens's wind turbines use four large "wind cups" to collect wind energy. The wind blows the cups clockwise and then drives the gears through a series of well-designed gear structures that allow the car to go straight to the wind.
“This wind turbine model is a good example for teaching engineering connections and energy conversion,†explains Carstens. “For example, we can estimate that a wind turbine needs a distance to travel a certain distance. How many turns are rotated, which can be calculated by measuring the diameter of the wheels and gears."
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