An undergraduate student at Penn State University discovered a new approach to a century-old problem, and in doing so made it easier for engineers to develop more efficient wind turbines.
The real world is frighteningly complex, and physicists like to start with this simplest approximation to the problem to make headway, and then add refinements as needed. In the case of wind turbines, the first attempt to determine their optimization was made by Hermann Glauert, a British aerodynamicist, in the early 20th century.
Optimization is crucial for wind turbines because for a given set of materials with certain properties like stiffness and weight, we want the turbines to get the maximum amount of electricity possible out. Glauert’s solution gave an answer, but it essentially assumed that wind turbines were solid discs and did not respond to the myriads of forces that they encountered in actual operation.
Since then there have ...
