Science Of Windmill | How Does Windmill Work?

Introduction

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I am bringing you this prodigious article with lots of information about windmills and will satisfy all your needs and your level of mind in the modern era. 

So today's topic is Science Of Windmill | How Does Windmill Work?. So fast up your seat belts and go flying up within the air with lots of information.

Key Contents

• Science Of Windmill | How Does Windmill Work?
• Three Main Features To Explain
• Physical Science- Mathematics and Kinetic Energy
• Reason Of The Respective Physical Science Of Wind Mill
• Source Of The Answer
• Variation In The Parts
• Epitome (Summary)

Science Of Windmill | How Does Windmill Work?

Before starting let us start with the point that what is a windmill and it is simple to understand. A windmill is a formation that transforms wind energy into rotational energy by the mode of the blade. 

Nowadays it is extended to windpumps, wind turbines and other kinds of technology. This energy is stored in form of wind energy and can be used in various means such as pumping water and sawing wood.

How did we get from this to this? In some ways the answer just boils down to “climate change” - we need way more renewable energy. 

So it makes sense that lots and lots of engineering and economic resources have gone into improving and enlarging windmills.

But while “climate change” can explain why windmills have pushed towards really good design, it doesn’t explain what makes a design good. 

Three Main Features To Explain

I see three main features to explain: the size,  the number of blades, and the shape of the blades. Size is easiest: the bigger the area, the more wind you can use, and therefore the more wind energy you can capture. 

Plus, the higher up you go, the less the wind itself is impeded by stuff on the ground, the faster it blows, and therefore the more wind energy you can capture. 

So for a windmill to have access to air with a lot of energy, it should be giant and tall. 

However, a paradox of windmills is that they need to capture energy from the wind while also letting the wind past. 

Physical Science- Mathematics and Kinetic Energy

If you extracted 100% of the kinetic energy from the wind, it would stop moving and there’d be nowhere for the incoming wind to go.

So you have to let some wind through - calculation shows that a mathematically ideal windmill can only extract 59% of the wind’s kinetic energy. 

Since windmills can’t block the wind too much, they’re faced with a tradeoff:  either has fast-moving blades that cover a small amount of area, or slow-moving blades that cover a large amount of area.

Reason Of The Respective Physical Science Of Wind Mill

This is because just as an aeroplane wing produces more lift the faster the plane is moving, a windmill blade “catches” more of the wind the faster it’s moving.

So roughly speaking, a fast-moving windmill, like modern ones, needs correspondingly fewer, thinner blades to not slow the wind too much. 

While a  slow-moving windmill can have more, wider blades. Modern windmills have gone with the narrow, fast approach. So why modern windmills are designed to spin more quickly than old windmills. 

I mean, if slower were better, there would be no reason modern windmills couldn’t look like giant high-tech sails! 

Source Of The Answer

The answer comes from Newton’s third law: just as the wind pushes the blades sideways to turn them, so the blades push back on the wind,  giving the air a reverse twist, and hence some rotational kinetic energy. 

Which is energy the windmill doesn’t capture. So the most efficient windmill will give the wind the smallest twist possible. 

And, you guessed it, the faster a windmill blade moves, the less rotational energy it gives to the wind. This might seem a little counter-intuitive,  but a similar thing happens when a ball falls and bounces off an angled block. 

If the block isn’t moving, conservation of momentum and energy means that the ball bounces to the left and the block gets pushed right. 

But if the block starts off moving to the right, it’s able to absorb more of the ball’s energy when it accelerates. The faster the block moves, the more energy it extracts from the ball! 

Variation In The Parts

Windmill blades are a bit more complicated, but it’s roughly the same idea - for decent efficiency, a  windmill blade should be moving through the air at least five times faster than the incoming speed of the wind. 

Though different parts of the windmill blade are moving at different speeds and so the shape varies along the length of the blade. 

For your general knowledge, I would like to tell you that there are 3 major parts of the windmill. Namely the generator, nacelle, tower and blades.

Epitome (Summary)

So in summary: an ideal power-generating windmill is big to capture a lot of wind, tall to capture strong winds, fast-moving to be most efficient, and narrow-bladed because a fast-moving windmill to not slow down the wind too much. 

To date, it is found that windmills have been evolved into modern wind turbines. All in one in my opinion wind energy is a sustainable way to limit climate change.

I would end this post here and hope you liked it and got to know about the working of windmills. I hope this post is worth it. Please comment on the things which you liked and disliked about my post.

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