Engineering

Project 06 / 06

Wind Turbine Generator for Power Generation

A small wind-driven generator was built around an 80-turn rotating coil, opposing neodymium magnets, and carbon-brush contacts. In a wind tunnel, open-circuit AC EMF was read from paused oscilloscope frames at five wind speeds, then compared with a simplified Faraday's-law model.

Role
Generator Design & Testing
Methods
3D Printing · Wind Tunnel · Oscilloscope · Faraday's Law · Data Analysis

Physical build + reported open-circuit EMF

Physical generator — 80-turn rotating coilCompleted team-built generator: a propeller-driven shaft and coil rotate between opposing magnets on a wooden base with 3D-printed supports.
Completed small wind-driven generator on a wooden base with a red propeller, rotating coil, opposing neodymium magnets, 3D-printed supports, and brush contacts.
Five reported observations — 14.40 to 66.80 mVReported peak open-circuit EMF at five wind speeds. Wind speed is a proxy for rotation because turbine RPM was not recorded.
Measured plot of peak open-circuit EMF across five wind speeds, rising from 14.40 millivolts at 13.13 meters per second to 66.80 millivolts at 31.00 meters per second.

Reported peak open-circuit EMF increased across five observations, from 14.40 mV at 13.13 m/s to 66.80 mV at 31.00 m/s.

01 — From airflow to observable EMF

The engineering question was whether a wind-driven rotating coil could produce measurable induced voltage and support a bounded comparison with Faraday's law.

The team set out to design and fabricate a small generator, observe induced voltage at several wind speeds, examine the resulting waveforms, and compare the observations with a simplified Faraday's-law model. A propeller supplied the mechanical input; the project measured electrical potential at open circuit rather than delivered electrical power.

The recorded test variable was wind speed. Turbine RPM was not directly measured, so the evidence supports a five-point wind-speed/peak-EMF observation set rather than a calibrated relationship between rotation and generator output.

02 — Building the rotating generator

The physical design links airflow, rotation, changing magnetic flux, and a stationary measurement connection.

Mechanical-to-electrical path

The team wound an 80-turn copper coil around a custom 3D-printed PLA frame and mounted it on a 2 mm steel shaft. Two facing neodymium magnets, each approximately 3.2 cm in diameter, created the magnet-gap region around the rotating coil; the shaft was supported by two team-designed printed structures on a wooden base.

A plastic propeller attached to the shaft received wind-tunnel airflow. Carbon-brush contacts transferred the induced AC voltage from the rotating shaft to a Rigol DS1104Z oscilloscope, making the signal observable without claiming a loaded electrical output.

  • Propeller-driven steel shaft rotates the coil.
  • The 80-turn coil moves through the field between opposing magnets.
  • Carbon brushes connect the rotating assembly to stationary oscilloscope probes.

03 — Tuning the physical coupling

The final test configuration followed practical adjustments to the magnet gap, airflow orientation, and brush contact.

Initial testing used a 57 mm magnet spacing and produced weak output. The magnets were later spaced approximately 30 mm apart for the final configuration. The report treats the smaller gap as a practical way to increase flux linkage, but it does not provide a before-and-after voltage series that would quantify the change.

For wind-tunnel trials, the assembly was taped to the test platform and the propeller faced directly into the airflow. The report describes side-on and reverse orientations as visibly lower/negligible voltage conditions, while brush wear and contact variation required each trial to begin with a contact check and, when needed, brush repositioning.

04 — Five wind-tunnel observations

The primary quantitative evidence is a five-point record of reported peak open-circuit EMF at specified wind speeds.

Reported peak open-circuit EMF observations
TrialWind speedPeak EMF
113.13 m/s14.40 mV
219.20 m/s38.80 mV
322.80 m/s55.60 mV
426.14 m/s58.40 mV
531.00 m/s66.80 mV

At each reported wind speed, the propeller was allowed to reach steady rotation and the AC-coupled oscilloscope display was paused so its peak value could be read visually. Each row is one reported observation; no repeated-trial statistics or uncertainty bounds are documented. Wind speed is a proxy because RPM was not recorded.

Oscilloscope evidence

Rigol oscilloscope display showing a periodic, non-sinusoidal waveform measured from the wind-driven generator, with a 66.80 millivolt cursor reading visible on the screen.
AC-coupled Rigol DS1104Z — open-circuit measurementOscilloscope record from the generator test. The report describes periodic, non-sinusoidal peaks; the 66.80 mV cursor reading corresponds to the reported highest-wind-speed observation.

The waveform serves as instrumentation evidence of periodic induced voltage, not as an RPM, frequency, load, or power characterization.

Reported peak open-circuit EMF

14.40 mV at 13.13 m/s → 66.80 mV at 31.00 m/s

Across the five reported observations, peak EMF rose with wind speed. The evidence is a bounded set of paused-frame readings, not a calibrated generator-performance curve.

No load, current, power, efficiency, torque, direct RPM, repeatability, or uncertainty result is established by this table or waveform.

05 — Using Faraday's law as a bounded model

The report's equations explain the design concept while keeping estimated model inputs separate from the measured observations.

Rotating-coil induction model

Faraday's law relates induced EMF to changing magnetic flux. For the report's simplified rotating-coil model, turn count, effective field, coil area, and angular velocity set an idealized peak-EMF estimate.

Number of coil turns; the project used 80.
Effective magnetic field in the coil region; modeled rather than measured for the final configuration.
Coil area, reported as approximately 3.23 × 10⁻⁴ m².
Angular velocity; not directly recorded during the wind-tunnel observations.

The report used B_eff ≈ 0.03 T and ω ≈ 40–70 rad/s as model estimates, producing an illustrative 31–54 mV range. Neither quantity is a measured test result.

The source model used the 80-turn coil and reported coil area to estimate an order of magnitude for peak EMF. Its effective field value of approximately 0.03 T and angular-velocity range of approximately 40–70 rad/s were assumptions because no final Gauss-meter reading or direct RPM measurement was recorded.

The model therefore gives context for the observed voltage range rather than a calibrated prediction. It can support a conceptual link between changing flux and induced voltage without converting wind speed into a measured rotation rate or presenting the estimate as validation accuracy.

06 — What the test establishes—and what it does not

The defensible outcome is a small, team-built generator with observed open-circuit AC EMF—not a complete generator-performance characterization.

Defensible outcome

Measured open-circuit AC EMF

The shared team built and wind-tunnel-tested a rotating-coil generator that produced the five reported peak-EMF observations and a periodic non-sinusoidal waveform.

This does not establish delivered electrical power, efficiency, optimized performance, or commercial wind-turbine behavior.

Jack Brogan, Dylan Luebke, and Cooper Robillard are the report's three authors. The public role, Generator Design & Testing, communicates Cooper's documented workstream while preserving the report's shared construction, testing, analysis, and reporting attribution.

The report's next steps are to directly measure angular velocity and magnetic field strength, add a known electrical load, revise coil/magnet geometry, and improve brush or slip-ring contacts. These are proposed measurements and redesign directions, not completed results.