Research in Mechanical Engineering

APPROPRIATE TECHNOLOGY

Staff Involved: A.D. Lucey, T.C. Chandratilleke

Project Description(s):

Low-cost small-scale hydropower

Work has been conducted to develop various aspects of micro- and pico-hydropower. In particular, a very low-head (3-4 metres) system using an axial-flow turbine has been built and tested using extremely simple technology. Further work is anticipated to develop and model the system.

Rainwater harvesting

Work has been carried out in collaboration with the Development Technology Unit at Warwick University in the U.K. that seeks to design and develop low-cost domestic rainwater harvesting systems. Of particular interest here at Curtin is the study of the spatially varying flow in the gutter. Numerical and asymptotic methods are being used to solve the governing equations thereby yielding theoretical tools that can be used to select optimal gutter characteristics. Of further interest is the system for delivering the gutter water to the storage tank and its discharge into the tank in such a manner that mixing is reduced.

Mechanical harvesting of olives

Many small producers of olives in Western Australia find that there is no obvious best way to harvest olives. A market exists for a machine that avoids the capital outlay typical of larger olive producers and is not labour intensive as some of the existing smaller devices. Preliminary work has identified some of the behavioural characteristics of olive trees under shaking, namely that energy transfer to the tree only occurs with reasonable efficiency at the natural frequency of the branch structure being shaken. This project seeks to build on the theoretical modelling work and develop a working prototype of an optimal shaker mechanism.

Speed control of wind turbines

Speed control of wind turbines is important for structural protection under high wind conditions and for power conditioning purposes. Very small wind turbines often have no speed control while very large turbines have sophisticated speed control. A simple but reliable speed control strategy would be of immense value for small to medium (2-4m diameter) wind turbines. Fluidics offers, in principle, the means to meet this challenge but has not been commercially applied in this area. The goals of this project are to develop a fluidics control system and verify its utility through wind-tunnel testing.

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