wind turbine triple helix

thingiverse

Inspired by interactions with Drew and Art Turbine and a recently acquired 3d printer, I built and tested a few iterations of vertical axis wind turbines. I used Solidworks to design an approximation of the 2 bladed Art Turbine and also tried 2 helical designs. I concluded from a few basic tests, with a fan for the wind source, that the 3 blade, untapered design is most efficient. The Art Turbine looks better though and might work better with 3 blades. Vibration may be induced by uneven torque with 2 blades as turbine rotates, if so the vibration frequency would probably be twice the rotational speed. 3 blades would smooth out torque.