Weekly Log 8 (March 28-April 3)

This week, our team focused on testing the system and trying some applications.

We had to move our equipment to a mechanical engineering lab in the Carruth building. The lab has an equipment that we needed, a wing tunnel. We used the wing tunnel to generate some wind in order to test our wind turbine. The weather in Statesboro does not have sufficient wind for our wind turbine to work. Indeed, the wind turbine needs to generate at least 12V in order to charge the battery. The only way that we could have it spin that fast was using the wind tunnel in the Carruth building. We had to get tutorial on how to work the wind tunnel and also ask permission in order to use it.

The testing was conclusive; we were able to record some data and confirm that the wind turbine is able the charge the battery. The lab is also convenient for our project because it has a back door, so allowing us to set the solar panel outside on the balcony and bring the wires in through the door. That helped us set the complete system and test the wind turbine and the solar panel with the charge controller. It worked perfectly and we were able to record some data. This week was very important for our project because it was the first time for us to test our complete system.

We came up with an application for our project that consist in using the Dc system to power the weather channel and do a ballistic application. The proposed system aims to power a weather station to determine the trajectory of a bullet. When in flight, the major forces acting on the projectile are gravity, drag, and if present, wind. With data from our weather station, which is powered by our hybrid system, we can determine the ballistic trajectory of a bullet. We went to a shooting range to implement this application.

We took the batteries out of the weather station and the wind sensor and soldered wires in order to use our Dc system as power input.

Rewiring weather station

Soldering tool used

Rewiring wind sensor

Subsonic wind tunnel