[HN Gopher] A numerical study of bio-inspired wingtip modificati...
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       A numerical study of bio-inspired wingtip modifications of modern
       wind turbines
        
       Author : ulrischa
       Score  : 6 points
       Date   : 2024-04-07 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.sciencedirect.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedirect.com)
        
       | gravescale wrote:
       | I know it's a trivial observation but Fig 1 really shows how huge
       | these blades are: that relatively tiny winglet tip is nearly 3
       | metres long, much taller than an adult. The rational side of me
       | supposes it's not surprising that a single blade that can pull
       | 3-plus megawatts out of thin air would be rather large!
       | 
       | Also, if the power output can increase by anything near the
       | claimed amount (8 and 4 percent for different sizes of winglet),
       | why don't current turbines use them? They're heavily used in
       | aviation, and turbine designers are huge on geometry tuning via
       | numerical simulation, as well as wind tunnel testing and so on to
       | squeeze every last joule out of the device. On a proportional
       | basis, at 8 million per 10MW turbine, every 1% is worth $80k per
       | unit. Surely one of them tried winglets by now? Is there a patent
       | minefield or does it make the blade manufacture infeasible or
       | expensive or damage the blade's reliability or maintainability?
        
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       (page generated 2024-04-07 23:02 UTC)