The Blackbird wind driven car from Thin Air Designs attained a speed 2.86 times faster than the wind while it was being driven into the wind, which seems counter intuitive but there is a video to prove it.
The trick to going faster than the wind is the 17ft (5.19m) propeller linked to the wheels. The wheels turn the propeller that provides the thrust to the lightweight cart that increases the wheel revolutions, thus increasing blade speed. The wind speed was 10knots (18.5kp,11.5mph) and the cart speed levelled out at 28.6knots (53kph, 33mph) during their high speed testing in the desert.
According to Cavallaro and Borton, the designers and builders, who had backing from Joby Engineering and Google, the wind is still providing energy input to the cart even when the cart is travelling faster than the wind speed. Their wind turbine gives 23hp (17.2kw) at top speed, almost four times the theoretical maximum output of a traditional wind turbine.
Visit: http://thinairdesigns.com/
Via DiscoverMagazine
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