Mechanical Engineering reports

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Development of guidelines for the construction of wind turbines using scrap material
(Elsevier, 2016) Rodrigues, R.; Piper, J.; Bhattacharya, S.; Wilson, S.; Birzer, C.; Vidan, A.; Shoag, D.
Worldwide, approximately 2 billion people lack access to reliable electricity. This results in limited access to refrigerated foods and medicines, emergency hospital facilities, and lighting. A lack of lighting alone is known to prevent education of children, especially girls. Providing reliable access to electricity is essential in raising the quality of life for 2 billion people. However, electricity generation is usually expensive, or has high capital costs and requires a high degree of technical knowledge. To help address this issue, a set of guidelines for the development and manufacture of different wind power generation systems has been written. The guidelines are designed such that the users can build wind turbines based on the scrap material that they have available. To ensure the guidelines were suitable, four proof-of-concept devices were made and tested in the field and in a wind tunnel. The results show that power generation is possible with limited equipment and technical capability. However, further work is required to optimise the manufacturing processes.