STEM 1 is taught by Dr. Crowthers, and is unlike any class I have ever taken. In STEM, Dr. Crowthers leads us through our independent research projects. For me, this involved integrating a field I never realized I had a passion for, Biology, with a field I have always been passionate about Engineering. For my project, I had the opportunity of investigating different animal wings, and through 3D design, I was able to connect them to a central hub, and print them out! If you want to learn more about this project, check out the rest of this page.
When researching different ways to optimize renewable energy, I stumbled upon a problem with wind turbines. Because of the amount of noise they generated, they were limited based on sound measurements, meaning we weren’t harvesting as much clean renewable energy as we could. To try and solve this problem, I investigated different naturally occurring wings to determine if they could reduce the noise produced by wind turbines. While I discovered that a simulation was better suited for sound measurements, I was still able to draw connections back to sound.
Wind turbine blades generate broadband noise as a result of production, resulting in harmful levels of noise. As a result, restrictions are placed on wind turbines, hindering the overall power they could generate.
To lower the noise emitted by wind turbine blades, different biological airfoils will be examined and tested for noise reducing characteristics .
