Darrieus wind turbine
Overview
Vertical axis wind turbine
Vertical-axis wind turbines are a type of wind turbine where the main rotor shaft is set vertically and the main components are located at the base of the turbine...
(VAWT) used to generate electricity
Electricity
Electricity is a general term encompassing a variety of phenomena resulting from the presence and flow of electric charge. These include many easily recognizable phenomena, such as lightning, static electricity, and the flow of electrical current in an electrical wire...
from the energy
Energy
In physics, energy is an indirectly observed quantity. It is often understood as the ability a physical system has to do work on other physical systems...
carried in the wind
Wind
Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space...
. The turbine
Turbine
A turbine is a rotary engine that extracts energy from a fluid flow and converts it into useful work.The simplest turbines have one moving part, a rotor assembly, which is a shaft or drum with blades attached. Moving fluid acts on the blades, or the blades react to the flow, so that they move and...
consists of a number of aerofoil
Airfoil
An airfoil or aerofoil is the shape of a wing or blade or sail as seen in cross-section....
s usually—but not always—vertically mounted on a rotating shaft or framework. This design of wind turbine was patented by Georges Jean Marie Darrieus
Georges Jean Marie Darrieus
Georges Jean Marie Darrieus was a French aeronautical engineer in the 20th century. He is perhaps most famous for his invention of the Darrieus rotor, a wind turbine capable of operating from any direction and under adverse weather conditions, and the vertical-axis giromill.The invention is...
, a French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
aeronautical engineer
Aerospace engineering
Aerospace engineering is the primary branch of engineering concerned with the design, construction and science of aircraft and spacecraft. It is divided into two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering...
in 1931.
The Darrieus type is theoretically just as efficient
Energy conversion efficiency
Energy conversion efficiency is the ratio between the useful output of an energy conversion machine and the input, in energy terms. The useful output may be electric power, mechanical work, or heat.-Overview:...
as the propeller type if wind speed is constant, but in practice this efficiency is rarely realised due to the physical stresses and limitations imposed by a practical design and wind speed variation.
Unanswered Questions
