Tidal Wave Design: Which Blade is best? By: Patrick Massie & Jude Baquet

1. Tidal Wave Design: Which Blade is best? By: Patrick Massie & Jude Baquet Rockdale Magnet School for Science and Technology Introduction Materials Experimental Design Diagram Procedures • Preserving the environment is key to the human survival on the planet we call Earth. That is why tidal energy can help reduce pollutants let out into the air in and around coastal cities. With this design, coastal cities will be able to lower their demand on electricity produced from coal burning plants and can greatly lower the costs in the long run. How can we help coastal cities produce clean renewable energy for the future? • Tidal energy is not a very big renewable resource; however, there is a potential in the future when further research is done to maximize the efficiency of tidal energy to be able to use. • There are thee blade design. Each blade is going to be the exact same size; however, each propeller is going to have a different number of blades. Depending on the number of blades depends on the weight and motion of the blades in the water current. They are cut out of large 3ft x 3ft Aluminum sheets that were purchased from Lowes. All the materials must be gathered such as the bilge pump and the water tank that testing will be done in. • After construction, testing will be done in a large, plastic container filled with many gallons of water. To simulate an ocean current we will use a bilge pump to create a current. The blades will be mounted and tested in the current of the bilge pump. Each propeller design will have three trials of 15 seconds long. The Lab Quest will record a data point each millisecond. Then Data Analysis will be done. Hypothesis • Engineering Goal: The design is to be built and tested to see which of the three propeller designs is most cost effective as well as energy efficient. The three different designs will be made of Aluminum so that it is malleable as well as durable. • Hypothesis: Tidal energy is not a large renewable resource used today. However, there is potential with this type of resource. Tides and currents of the shore are forever and never changing. The moon effects the movements and we can decipher when and where the most efficient location would be. Because of the known behavior of the ocean shores and floors, we are able to tell where would the rig do the best. Descriptive Statistics Trial 1-3: Two Propeller Design Trial 4-6: Three Propeller Design Inferential Statistics • P value and statistical significance: (Trial 1 - 3) The two-tailed P value equals 0.6195 By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant • P value and statistical significance: (Trial 4 - 6) The two-tailed P value equals 0.8526 By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant • P value and statistical significance: (Trial 7 - 9) The two-tailed P value equals 0.9724 By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant • P value and statistical significance: (All Trials Together) The two-tailed P value equals to 0.7147 By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be not statistically significant Background • The oldest known tidal mill dates back to 787 A.D. in Spain, France, and Britain. Tidal power is clean, non-polluting, reliable and predictable. Because of the constant tidal waves and currents, the resource is forever going and predictable to the hour. • One of the most recent projects in the tidal energy area is Wales’s first commercial tidal energy farm, off the coast of Anglesey. The entire project is approximately £70m Skerries also with a £10m in UK government funding. The rigs will be 40m (130ft) deep in water. The developers of the project predict they can power 10,000 homes. • In the fall of 2010, Fundy Ocean Research Center for Energy (FORCE) and Offshore Energy Research (OEER) held a workshop to discuss the topic of tidal research. The purpose of such a workshop was to come up with research topics and proposals. This is just one of a few times and situations that people are trying to find cleaner energy. For instance, the northern most town in the world is incorporating the world’s first tidal energy farm. Kvalsund, Norway, this town incorporating the tidal power, with the managing director of Hammerfest Stroem. These three trials we tested the double blade design for fifteen seconds three different times. Each trial represents the up and down motion of the Volts generated by the ‘simulated current.’ The turbine used was a small scale kit piece and didn’t pick up much voltage. The two propeller design harnessed the least amount of volts in and around .209567 volts all together. The three trials here represent the triple blade design. On average, this design read more volts than the double and the quadruple blade designs. It was around .381367 volts on average for all three tests. Alike with the double blade design, three trials in fifteen minute increments were used. Trial 7-9: Four Propeller Design Conclusion Data Conclusion and Future References • The purpose of this research project was to see if efficient, feasible tidal energy blades could be built and tested to see what a in-lab environment would conclude. • Our Hypothesis was supported. The blade design in the middle on average was best of using the natural current to harness the voltage. • Due to design flaw, the blades where off in angle along with size and shape. The sizes were very similar but not completely accurate to each other. The blades where not put on the hard plastic center piece all at the same angle. All these errors could cause the rotation of the propeller to be off. Along with all this; out project was tampered with and that rod connected to the turbine was not strait. • Future research includes further research in the history and mathematical designs. As well as improving the design that was built to be able to efficiently work in the real world. Hopefully after further research, a more practical design could be made. • Is it possible to see tidal energy be used more widely in the future? If so, who will be able to come up with the best design? • A different design could have been used; this would give a wider arrange of blades to see which would have the best outcome. All together in the bar graph about we can see that on average that the three blade design was best in harnessing the current’s energy.. Our hypothesis was supported and hopefully future research will tell us why this outcome came along. With the fourth and final blade, to keep consistency we did three tests in fifteen second increments. This was the second best blade design out of the three. On average it produced .342469 volts all together. The lines represent the up and down motion of the volts read from the volt meter.