Almost there... again!

Well I had plans drawn up, changed them, drew them up again, and now I am changing them again. The first set of plans involved a two bladed savonius rotor with a twist. Ironically this is not far from my final set of plans. I then removed the twist, added a third blade to balance out the reverberations that would be generated with a two blade rotor, and invented a dynamic superstructure to help direct wind into the turbine. I then (most recently) came across an article discussing how the twist put into a savonius rotor has a direct effect on the efficiency. I'm still puzzling through the article a bit, but it seems that adding the twist back in is the way to go.

The article also uses ABS plastic to create the turbine because of the twist. Creating a twist like that in steel sheet metal might be very difficult, and since Lemelson has the tools to work with ABS plastic I plan to look into that.

Thinking back, it seems I had the right idea in adding a third blade. The result of this is similar to the addition of a twist in that both remove uneven torque on the shaft as the blades turn.

Things to consider: weight of ABS vs. sheet metal, efficiency, ease of implementation of either ABS or sheet metal. In the end I will have to use sheet metal anwyays for the superstructure..!