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I'm addicted to this site haha. I was driving to school and remembered a MATLAB program I had written to calculate the best curvature of a turbine blade I was designing last summer.
If anyone is serious about trying to implement a turbine in front of the radiator let me know.
To ball park some figures of the power available in the oncoming air of an area 1 foot by 3 foot (3 sq. feet) guestimate...
Kinetic Energy -> E = .5mv^2 ...:: m = mass , v = velocity
Mass Flow Rate -> m/s = (rho)Av ...:: s = second , rho = density , A = area
Plug in Mass Flow Rate into Kinetic Energy for m:
E/s = (.5(rho)Av^3)/s = Power ...:: Energy per second is power.
**All following calculations are at sea level and converted to SI Units**
So 10 mph -> P = .5*(1.225)*.28*(4.48^3) = 15.4 Watts possible
30 mph -> P = .5*(1.225)*.28*(13.41^3) = 413.6 Watts possible
55 mph -> P = ...................*(24.59^3) = 2.55 kW possible
70 mph -> P = ...................*(31.29^3) = 5.25 kW possible
Pretty big jump. Lets be real and say we could get 10% of that... Catching 255 watts driving 55 mph at night might cover the headlights. Might be something worth trying. Like I said, let me know if you want me to run the AoA program and give you the curvature of the blades. I'll need a ballpark figure for how fast you want it to spool up and the alternator's efficiency so I know what kind of force is needed at that speed.
-Ryan
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