The Application of Laminated Wooden Blades to a Two-Meter Darrieus Type Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of laminated Lauan plywood in a 2-meter-diameter, 3-bladed Darrieus wind turbine. The manufacture, testing and tensile stress analysis of laminated wooden blades are described. Although the tensile strengths of all candidate unidirectional laminates (Lauan, Monalava, poplar and maple) exceeded the induced blade stresses, Lauan was chosen for wind tunnel testing based on cost and dimensional stability. Two airfoil sections, NACA 0012 and NACA 0025, of 7.39 cm chord length (i.e., leading to trailing edge dimension) were shaped from curved laminated Lauan blanks which had the grain oriented along the blade arc. The thicker NACA 0025 airfoil, where the thickness is 25 percent of the chord length, performed normally in the wind tunnel test.