why wind turbines have such skinny blades. Wouldn’t more surface area be more effective?
In: Engineering
Wind turbines need high speed, low torque, rotation to power a generator. To get this from the wind, smaller sails angled to the wind are best, allowing the wind to push them into a fast spin. Windmills use much wider sails that are not angled as much. If you’ve seen a video of them you know they rotate gracefully slow, because they need to move a heavy stone to mill grain, the slow speed is the trade off, but a welcome safety feature I am sure.
You see the same thing with old sailing ships, which use large sales to move a relatively blunt boat full of cargo verses modern racing sailboats which use thin carbon fiber wings on super aerodynamic boats that hardly touch the water.
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