Ventomobile, World's First Wind-Powered Race Car, Ready for Primetime
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 08. 5.08
While electric cars and PHEVs may still be all the rage stateside, a team of German students has already moved on to the next latest and greatest: wind-powered vehicles. That's right: students from Stuttgart University's Team InVentus have built the Ventomobile, a three-wheeled "car" which features a 2 meter diameter two-bladed rotor mounted on top.
Despite its seeming unwieldiness, the Ventomobile has already proven itself as a potent racing contender -- performing impressively during early wind tunnel testing. The airy vehicle weighs in below 100 kg and has an engine power of 6 kW. See below the fold for a video of the construction process.
The InVentus team plans on competing in the 3-day, 5.3 kilometer Aeolus Race in Den Helder, Netherlands, against 5 teams from other European universities and research institutions. Here's a short description from the official website:
The Race will start in the former fishing village of Huisduinen (founded aroud the year 1500)and still part of Den Helder. The teams will gather in front of Fort Kijkduin, a fortress originally built by the French in the Napoleonic era and subsequently altered by the Dutch and by the Germans in the second world war. After a good job of renovating it now houses a sea aquarium and a museum showing it's history.The race is conducted on the Den Helder seawall. During all three days the seawall won't be opened to the public or public traffic between 8 am and 5 pm, however all participating teams have to obey traffic signs. All team manoeuvres on the track will be observed by an observation team during trial & testing, qualifying race and finals. The observation team consists of 1 or 2 arbitrators and a full inspection team. At 6 pm, each night, we will make camp.
Via ::ScienceDaily: Wind Powered Vehicle, Ventomobile, Ready To Race In The Netherlands (news website)
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So, what's its peak speed when the wind is strong and at a good, steady pace?
how does it work?!?!?!?!?!
it looks cool as hell!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This'll be a race car when it can compete at the Indy 500, F1, or LeMans.
Until then its a fancy bike.
While I think the design shown in the picture is very nice, I'd have to question the 6kw engine power mentionied in the posting, unless it's getting power from somewhere other than the wind on the 2 meter diameter turbine.
According to calculations from http://www.awea.org/faq/windpower.html, given a 20 mph (9m/s) wind, a 2 meter diameter stream of air contains ~1.4km of energy. Capturing that energy and converting it to use-able power to turn the wheels will have to conform to Betz's law, meaning no more than 59% of the power in the wind can be captured. This is before friction and other losses are figured in. So .6kw is a much more realistic figure.
For a more direct wind to motion contraption, check out the pterosail.
http://www.pterosail.com/
6kW is probably wrong. however, you should take into account that the car is moving which - in the case of headwind - means that the speed of the car adds to the speed of wind, which asks for a variation of Betz's law.
The 6kw figure is probably the maximum output of the wind turbine before it explodes.
The 6kw is a max value when the car is moving in a wind. So the car experiences a greater than measured wind speed.
Chris: And while F1autos are engineering marvels, wind will be around long after we have dug up the last barrel of oil.
Race results will be posted soon, but cars are getting close to equalling the wind speed. There are several cars competing in the race, all European. The Americans can't build cars or wind turbines.
And to Michael, it has not exploded yet. It has eaten two gearboxes (too much power).
A Dutch team hit 22kmph (do the math) in a preliminary run, but what is important to the designers is the speed vs. the wind.
It would be interesting to see if having the turbine drive a generator charging a battery would be practical. Of course you would lose efficiency compared to direct drive, but the car could be charging while it was parked, and the battery could combined with the generator output for more rapid acceleration. Having the vehicle be able to run without continuous wind would almost make it usable as a regular car!
I also was thinking that this might be an interesting power medium for a light rail line in windy areas, as the rolling resistance of trains is very low compared to road vehicles.
Obviously using sails on a vehicle like the ventomobil would not be practical for going upwind (unless it was a very wide road for tacking), but I wonder if having the electric motor charge batteries when going downwind and using electric power alone for upwind courses might work. I guess that is sort of what the pterosail does...