Wanted: CAD Software for Designing Small Wind Turbines

Private DIY or industry?

thanks for your reply.

this is a private deal, just myself with a new wind turbine design.

This is not exactly what you asked for, but I assure you that its a fantastic read and may give you some brilliant ideas to do with VAWTs. In my humble opinion, the best design(s) of all.....

What one should not forget is that pure efficiency will not be of much use to you if the design, building and maintenance costs are immense.

The Savonius types are incredibly simple to build, also very cheap to build, much of the design data you need is contained in this .pdf (see below) and one of its greatest plus points, they can be built one alongside the other, where most other types need clear wind and therefore take up larger areas. I would recommend a double Savonius with the upper units set to 90° with respect to the lower units.....as mentioned several times in the .pdf.

You can find the .pdf here, enjoy:-

http://www.prod.sandia.gov/cgi-bin/techlib/access-control.pl/1976/760131.pdf

http://energysavingnow.com/plugin/windturbine.shtml

As a private designer, I'd suggest hooking up with a university, where you could get access to Flomerics which works with Solid Works. (Fluent is also highly regarded.) The CFD programs that do a good job with complicated 3 dimensional flow tend to be very expensive (Solid works with Flomerics is about $30,000 per seat, if I recall.)

Whether there is a better way or not depends upon your goal, I suppose. If you are looking for a "pretty good" design, you could simply study what has already been done, and imitate the successful designs. If you are wanting to go beyond the existing state of the art, then CFD is really the only reasonable approach. Making wind tunnel models is just too expensive and time consuming. In some other fields, you can make a proof of concept model that is not as well-finished as the real thing. But in aerodynamics, surface finish has a great deal to do with the function, so a good windmill blade is time consuming to make.

At first you buy all the stuff needed to build one at home, for less then 200 dollars from:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Homemade-Wind-Generator---How-to-Build-Your-Own-Wind-Turbine-For-Less-Than-$200!&id=2117434

A most efficient turbine, probably should be made of lightweight but very strong materials, like a combination of "Hungarocells" and Glasfiber, shaped in an aerodinamical form, then painted with plastic based color material.

Not too much imagination needed to make a few at home, just be a little handy, you can make one in a week or so.

How to make different materials and chemicals in a mix, and to be lightweight, and so on..

ask me anytime: attila2007@tele2.se

hi dear sir

do you find a software for design a small wind turbine ?

If you find please say me.

best regards

vahid memar

memar@momtazan.com

hello,

I am still looking. I have not found software that I can afford or borrow.

thank you for writing.

frank cianflone