Fluidic turbine structure
AssigneeBiomerenewables Inc.
InventorRyan Church
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A fluidic structure configured to be mounted onto the hub of a fluidic turbine comprising a hub that rotates about a center axis, aligned to a main shaft that contributes torque to the main shaft of the turbine via the principle of lift and/or drag. The fluidic structure can be rigid or have some flexibility. The structure has two or more curved fluidic elements that extend from an upstream tip that aligns to the center axis of rotation, to a downstream end at some further radial position away from the center axis, and rotates about the center axis, wherein the two or more curved fluidic elements contain chord sections that are generally more wide at the upstream position and general more narrow at the downstream position.
Claims18
A fluidic turbine comprising:
- a hub that rotates about a center axis of rotation, aligned to a main shaft;
- and
- a fluidic structure configured to be mounted onto the hub of a primary turbine that contributes torque to the main shaft through increasing at least one of lift and drag,
- wherein the fluidic structure includes two or more curved fluidic elements that extend from an upstream tip that aligns to the center axis of rotation, to a downstream end at a radial position away from the center axis, and rotates about the center axis to contribute torque to the primary turbine;
- and,
- wherein the two or more curved fluidic elements contain chord sections that are wider at an upstream position relative to a downstream position;
- wherein the upstream tip of the fluidic structure contains a sensor and and associated data system for determining environmental and turbine conditions, wherein data from the sensor and the sensor computing device is transmitted to a supervisory control and data acquisition system of the primary turbine.
A method of operating a fluidic turbine, wherein a sensor system is configured to determine environmental and turbine specific data, and includes at least one of a forward facing LiDAR sensor coupled to a tip of a fluidic structure that provides a feed-forward data stream of LiDAR information to reduce unwanted loads and operational phenomena on a primary turbine's rotating components and supporting structure, while improving the power performance through anticipatory control procedures and defined operating approaches and thresholds, wherein;
- a pitchable rotor blade is controllable to set a desired angle of attack,
- rotating components of the primary turbine or the fluidic structure are controllable to be yawed to one or more desired orientations;
- the method comprising:
- detecting, at a first detection plane spaced away from the fluidic turbine, a feed-forward data stream of LiDAR readings representing wind speed characteristics at the first detection plane;
- processing the feed-forward data stream in a supervisory control and data acquisition system configured to generate a series of mechanical control command signals responsive to the wind speed characteristic readings, the series of mechanical control command signals modifying at least the desired angle of attack and the one or more desired orientations of the rotating components;
- wherein the supervisory control and data acquisition system is configured to refresh control decisions in real or near real-time;
- detecting, at one or more load cells physically coupled to one or more curved fluidic elements of the fluidic structure, a strain level indicative of a load factor on the one or more curved fluidic elements to be stored in a data storage as one or more load factor data sets;
- processing, by the supervisory control and data acquisition system, the one or more load factor data sets to establish an error metric between the series of mechanical control command signals and the wind speed characteristics;
- and
- updating, by the supervisory control and data acquisition system, one or more control characteristics of the supervisory control and data acquisition computing device to reduce the error metric, the one or more control characteristics including at least a compensatory lag time between a time when the series of mechanical control command signals are utilized to modify the at least the desired angle of attack and the one or more desired orientations of the rotating components and a time when the wind speed characteristics are measured.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.