The world’s demand of energy is growing. Our lands and seas are getting more polluted day by day. Why don’t we act on one of the two to help counteract the other? CAN we do anything?

The proposed design aims to transition from a situation where potential energy is wasted to a situation where production of energy stems from the recycling waste. That’s why it is a vertical axis turbine, that can produce energy thanks to the power of wind. The idea surfaced observing the characteristics of the cans and their material. A can is an incredible object which is designed to withstand very high-pressure loads; this is due to it’s form and the material it’s composed of: aluminium.

If the top and bottom parts are removed the can becomes a pipe which has almost no stiffness along its lateral axis, but with a very high torsional stiffness. Aeronautically these are the defining characteristics of a wing. A wing that in this case made of one of the lightest metal, with excellent mechanical behaviours and with excellent resistance to corrosion. Once the can is bent and it’s endings constrained, the pipe maintains the imposed shape since it is a closed section profile. The supporting structure for the wings and the base components were 3d printed.

3D printing technology enables the creation of complex geometries such as an airfoil, which must have exactly the same shape of the other rotating blades not to introduce to many vibration and a constant rotational speed.

The proposed design has some interesting features: the profile of the wing has an asymmetric curved camber-line, this produces more lift. Pushing the joint between the wind and the airfoil forward a larger moment is obtained driving the turbine to spin even faster.

To reduce the drag produced the supports were designed with an aerodynamic profile.

This turbine has been design to produce a maximum power of 50W (enough to power a computer) at 10m/s.

The stackable configuration allows the user to print more supports and shafts and create a wing with a larger span, this will increase the lifting surface and the overall power produced.