Micro Wind Turbine for Powering Wireless Sensor Nodes

The goal of this study was to design a micro wind turbine having dimensions on the order of 1-10 cm3 for powering wireless sensor nodes. Using the parametric study based upon a computational model, the coupling factor between the blade and generator section was significantly enhanced. Building upon the formulation for the coupling factor, we derived efficiency metric for the rotational generators. A prototype was designed based upon the analytical study conducted through the combination of blade element momentum theory and ANSYS magnetics to match the performance of the generator to that of the blades. The blade diameter and depth was 72 mm and 9 mm, respectively. The generator diameter was 26 mm with total volume of 18.1 cm3. It was found that the micro wind turbine generated DC output power of 12.39 mW, 49.03 mW and 102.61 mW at 3.7 m/s, 6 m/s and 8 m/s wind speeds, respectively. The power density was computed to be 0.304, 1.204, and 2.52 mW/cm2, respectively, which are higher than all the other results reported in the literature.