Vortex Bladeless Turbines with Wings

Vortex bladeless turbine is a non-conventional turbine that does not use any rotor blades to capture energy from flowing fluid. The device captures the energy of periodic vortices shed downstream of a bluff body, an aero- hydrodynamic effect that has plagued structural engineers and architects for ages in different engineering designs. As the wind passes a fixed structure, the Von Karman vortex sheet-type vortices generate alternate lift forces on the mast (movable structure) and make it start oscillating. Research has shown that such bladeless turbines have an excellent ability to harvest low-speed wind or hydro-energy. Innovative modifications of the mast’s outer surface open the possibility of extracting energy from a flowing stream. In this paper, a new mast system is designed, developed, and experimented with in an open airflow system, which results in a nearly fivefold increase in the amplitude of the vibrations due to vortices. Wake-Induced Vibration (WIV) is also tested in another set of experiments which does not show the same possibilities.