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Facilities

600w turbine mounted and fitted on 8m hinging tower

Field Testing

Our current field test facility consists of an 8m hinging tower on the observation deck of the 4 storey main engineering building. A 600W turbine is mounted and fitted with sensors to provide data on yaw position, yaw rate, rotor rpm, power output, furling angle, along with wind data provided by a vane and anemometer. This machine will be used to learn more about wind turbine yaw dynamics. Future work includes taking strain gauge measurements from the rotating blades. This is the third field test facility that the Wind Energy Group will have operated.

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Current Field Test Equipment

The turbine is a three-bladed, 2 m diameter small horizontal axis machine, with a permanent magnet generator, and a horizontal furling tail. It is rated at 600 W at 700 rpm and U = 10 m/s. It has been instrumented with the sensors described below, and all signals are processed to produce voltage outputs that are read by a National Instruments A/D board and logged using the software package LabView. The PC and electronics are enclosed in a waterproof cabinet 10 m from the base of the turbine tower.

Data Logged

Turbine Yaw Position

Omron Rotary Encoder E6B2-CWZ6C, 360 pulses/revolution
The output has been sampled at 200Hz, filtered (2Hz low pass digital filter), and this has proven a reliable method of obtaining turbine yaw position and yaw rate when the filtered signal is differentiated. In hindsight a version of this encoder with higher resolution would have been better.

Turbine Yaw Rate

CFX Rate Gyro UGA-1
This sensor was expensive and of quite poor quality. It was useful for verifying that the encoder signal could be differentiated to give yaw rate, but is no longer used. The sensor ouput would saturate at a relatively low yaw rate, and it seemed generally unstable in its output.

Rotor Speed

Optical emitter and sensor, reflective strips on rotating generator
The rotating permanent magnet casing has alternating black/silver stripes that give 256 pulses per revolution read be a sensor and electronics built by our tech staff.

Wind Direction

MetOne 020C Wind Direction Sensor
Purchased from the US. Quite high damping ratio (0.45) and fast response with a plastic fin the Cockatoos like to eat. Potentiometer. Mounted on a boom below the turbine rotor. (see photos)

Wind Speed

Syncrotac Cup Anemometer, DC Generator
An Australian sourced cup anemometer, an older style design with a short stem and small cups that is perhaps old fashioned now. We've used this design for a number of years, so have three of them, and have some results for it's dynamics characteristics - that's why I'm still using it. Mounted on the same boom as the wind vane.

Tail Furl Angle

Linear Potentiometer
The pot is mounted inside the nacelle, and restrained at one end by elastic. When the tail furls an attached line moves the pot arm, and when it unfurls the elastic retracts the pot arm.

Power

Our electronics technician has built a control system that connects to a 24V battery, and maintains a constant voltage by dumping load as it is generated. Voltage and amperage are logged by the PC running LabView. The two 12V batteries connected in series are 35Ah Concorde deep cycle AGM batteries.

Fort Scatchley Turbine Field Testing

Previously, the Wind Energy Group undertook several years of field testing on a 5kW prototype turbine located on the Newcastle foreshore.

First Full-Scale Prototype Testing

The Wind Energy Group's first field testing facility was located adjacent to the university (early-mid 1990s).

Wind Tunnel

The tunnel pictured consists of a centrifugal fan, large tunnel section containing honeycomb flow straightener, and a contraction to the 1m x 0.5m test section. Pictured to the right is the outlet to the test section, setup with a traverse to measure the flow conditions across this area. Over the next year this tunnel will be used for activities such as tailfin and wind vane dynamic response measurements, anemometer calibrations, and aerofoil lift and drag measurements at high angle of attack and low Reynolds number, in support of turbine starting performance research.

Fatigue Test Facilities

Pictured below, the fatigue test facility for micro wind turbine blades allows a blade to be rotated up to its maximum tip speed ratio and simultaneously forced with a flap motion.