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Anemometer measures wind speed. It's shaped with little cups---hollow half-spheres. That looks very logical as the cups grab the wind and the other side is rather streamligned to cut through the air as it spins.

So why are there no wind turbines designed like this? (At least, I've never seen them.)

You could go further and make the cups ellipsoidal (more pointy). You could even add a inner shield, maybe like half a torus, around the inside to further streamlign the cups and help them grab wind.

This would be a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT). Been looking around at VAWTs on Youtube for a while and found a lot of interesting designs, but never seen one with cups. Why not? I know I've seen anemometers spinning around very rapidly in good winds, so its seems logical.

hazzey
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DrZ214
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3 Answers3

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Because the back of the cups create a lot of drag thereby reducing the power produced.

The blade profile used in classic 3-bladed HAWTs is also used in VAWTs and they look like "egg beaters" needing top and bottom bearings. The engineering complications of VAWTs make the 3-bladed HAWT much more popular also due to the power output, rotating mass and visual impact.

Solar Mike
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One other reason is that the propeller-type turbine allows it to be rotated to avoid damage in high winds. When the air is flowing transverse to the axis of the propeller it encounters relatively little drag.

It would be hard to imagine an orientation that would allow the anemometer-type design to avoid this.

Angus Murray
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Usually, the frequency of the ultrasonic anemometer is mainly 200 KHz probe, and there are 4 detectors. Through the description in this paper, it is uncertain whether the wind speed of a large range can be monitored.

Refer to this article:

https://www.weatherstation1.com/what-is-wind-sensor/

This covers almost all the principles of wind monitoring, and I hope it will be helpful to you.

Wasabi
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jack dawson
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