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comment by 99kiplingst
99kiplingst  ·  4501 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Evolving a wind turbine
"My recurring thought as I watched : is it possible to ensure a greater variety of shapes at the outset?"

Do you mean they should be drastically varied from one another? Or just less less "full"? What would be the advantage? Would this just delay the inevitable or do you think there would be far more varied final shapes?





kerryoco  ·  4500 days ago  ·  link  ·  
In particular the radiating spokes model seems too limited. If I'm not mistaken, the parameters here are any shape that would fit inside the circle, unless it needs to be attached in the middle. Even so, radiating shapes are just one 'family' of shapes that meet these parameters.

I'd have a go at programming the random shape generator, although I don't have any experience with wind simulations.

mk  ·  4499 days ago  ·  link  ·  
I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a more-efficient non-radiating spoke model. However, I bet that would be a bear to program. The spoke/non-spoke models might be effectively orthogonal in terms of energy vs the type of motion, so you might end up with some sort of weird less-efficient hybrid.

What does a Lenze blade look like? I couldn't find it in Google images.

Another limitation, is that this is just 2D. I imagine that a more-efficient 3D blade might have a very different profile.