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Non-Tech : Alternative energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Fishfinder who wrote (6453)	5/9/2009 12:14:05 AM
From: The Vet	1 Recommendation Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 16955

As stated wind turbines turn very slowly. I've seen thousands of them in action. Any bird worth his salt could easily fly through the blades. Just do the math! The largest turbines have a circumference of around 400 metres. The speed of sound is 340 metres a second. So if the turbine rotated at 60 rpm then the tips would be breaking the sound barrier travelling at 895 mph!!!! Are you suggesting that a bird can avoid a moving object that is travelling at greater than the speed of sound? Actually the problems caused by exceeding the speed of sound require the designers to limit the tip speed to no more than around 300 metres per second so the maximum rpm for a turbine that size could be no higher than about 45 rpm which looks to be quite slow to the eye but is still means that the tips of the blades are travelling at approx. 300 metres per second or 670 mph similar to the speed of a cruising commercial airplane.