[HN Gopher] Student refines 100-year-old math problem, expanding...
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       Student refines 100-year-old math problem, expanding wind energy
       possibilities
        
       Author : nill0
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2025-02-24 17:49 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.psu.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.psu.edu)
        
       | iAMkenough wrote:
       | Curious to see how the rest of the world benefits from this US
       | Navy-supported research while the US itself withdraws from wind
       | energy.
       | 
       | https://archive.is/PN2Of
        
         | ZeWaka wrote:
         | I believe you misread the article, her current work is
         | supported by the Navy, the subject of this article is not.
        
           | toss1 wrote:
           | >>her current work is supported by the Navy
           | 
           | The operative question in today's administration is: "For how
           | long?", because as soon as Elon's juvenile henchmen find it,
           | they'll cut it. If they had no hesitation firing people who
           | secured our nations nuke stockpile, Avian Flu researchers,
           | lawyers who keep drunk pilots out of cockpits, etc., etc.,
           | etc., they will have no hesitation to dump this valuable
           | research.
        
       | metalman wrote:
       | She found a 1% increase in turbine blade efficiency, with a
       | pencil, and her brain, in her "spare" time. Not just turbine
       | blade, but any airofoil that is spinning. And no one finds 1%,
       | all at once anymore, or that was the conventional thinking, with
       | the 1% or better days, long long gone, but here it is.
        
         | MrLeap wrote:
         | I don't think she found a 1% increase in efficiency. I think
         | she was being aspirational as to what her contribution could
         | lead to.
        
         | empath75 wrote:
         | I love that she did that, but I really get annoyed by college
         | PR departments reaching for practical applications for anything
         | cool done in math. IMO refining a 100 year old problem is good
         | enough for a press release!
        
       | gowld wrote:
       | > The objective of the present work is to determine the exact
       | integrals for thrust and bending moment coefficients, serving as
       | an addendum to Glauert's original work deriving optimum power
       | coefficients.
       | 
       | I don't think any "wind energy possibilities" were expanded. It
       | looks like the student author gave an elegant exact/analytic
       | computation of measurements that are already computable
       | numerically. Remember that all analytic results are always only
       | "Platonic ideal" approximations of real-world engineering
       | results. It's possible, though not at all mentioned in the paper,
       | that these exact solutions might make engineering computations
       | easier.
       | 
       | As always, the tell is that claims made _about the paper_ , but
       | _not in the paper_ are not to be relied upon. Nowhere does the
       | paper claim to measure any quantiative improvement in rotor
       | performance, not even theoretically potential improvements.
        
         | meander_water wrote:
         | > "Improving the power coefficient of a large wind turbine by
         | just 1% has significant impacts on the energy production of a
         | turbine, and that translates towards the other coefficients
         | that we derived relations for," she said. "A 1% improvement in
         | power coefficient could notably increase a turbine's energy
         | output, potentially powering an entire neighborhood."
        
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       (page generated 2025-02-24 23:00 UTC)