Singapore is a densely builtup country with few large open spaces. Conventional kite flying as a hobby takes up a lot of space especially along the shorelines and may even interfere with air traffic. Such activities do not benefit the majority of users of such open spaces. Furthermore, wind speed is low in the equator (usually no more than 15 km/h) and rather sporadic. Wind directions are also very changeable. Under these adverse conditions, a design of an
automatic self-flying kite is proposed in this webpage. In this design, the kite is attached to a pole of height ranging from 10m to 15m. The pole is achored on a heavy base such as a flag base of weight not less than 15 kg. The lowest length of the pole should be a water pipe, followed by an aluminium pipe followed by a bamboo stick topped by a flexible chain-link fence wire. The kite will hang like a pendulum in windless conditions but will start hovering when wind speed picks up. Part of the string is acnchored with a brick at ground-level to prevent the string from wrapping around the pole. This design is based on an extension of the concial pendulum idea employed in the 3-ball pole tennis. The string is attached to the tip of the kite. Detailed design of the setup is shown in fig.1 above.
In fig.1, the skite is constraint by one end of the suspension string being anchored at ground level. This may interfere with pedestrian walking beheath the kite. A better arrangement is shown in fig.2 where the suspension string is a catenary spanned between two poles. Since these strings are very fine fishing lines, from a distance these are invisible giving the illusion that the kite is flying unattached to anything. The kite also displays a jerky motion as if someone from ground level is manipulating it. In actual fact, the vertical pole is flexing back and forth thus periodically building up potential energy and releasing it as kinetic energy to the kite. The kite is particularly active just before rain. This exhibit is particularly attractive when installed in open-ground fairs and open-space of houses. An optional string could be supplied for a person to manipulate the kite but this is not absolutely necessary.
Alternative Usage: The self-flying kit is simply an entertaining toy but it gives rise to an innovative design of converting wind energy into electrical energy through vibration of the pole. With rising wind speed, the kite will start hovering but when it reaches its height it will stall. There is thus periodical increase and decrease in tension on the string attached to the top of the pole. This is why the pole will flex back and forth translated into storing and releasing of potential energy. This periodic vibration could be exploited to generate electricity. The advantage is that the kite could fly to greater height reaching into the higher and more constant wind speed layer not obtainable at ground level. The design entails optimising the periodic torque caused by the kite. The kite will also have to be specially designed for durability. Overall, this is a wind energy generator of much lower cost than the conventional wind generators designed for high wind speed zones around the world.
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