The remarkable first race for wind-powered vehicles

The Aerospace Engineering students constructed the drive shaft and the rotor blades of the three-wheeler utilising the know-how at the Stuttgart University Department of Composites and Lightweight Construction. The experience of the students and the staff at the Institute of Aero- and Gasdynamics also helped greatly in optimizing the vehicle. The carbon-fibre tower can be turned into the wind, and the variable-pitch blades can be adjusted to obtain the optimal angle to extract the most power from any given wind speed. The power is then transmitted to the driving axle via two bicycle gearsets and a bicycle chain, minimising frictional losses.

Matthias Schubert, Chief Technical Officer of the teams’ main sponsor REpower Systems AG, applauded the integration of the InVentus Ventomobile project into the coursework of the students: “The achievement of managing a big team over many months, and even making select construction tasks part of undergraduate teaching cannot be estimated highly enough! The enthusiasm the students show in renewable energies and the development of innovative solutions should serve the industry as an example for the development of new technologies.”

Prof. Martin Kühn, head of the Endowed Chair of Wind Energy and mentor of the InVentus team, was equally pleased with the success of his students. “The expert knowledge the students acquired during this project constitute an unique experience which will prove extremely helpful in their future careers. The Ventomobile and its competitors represent excellent and creative examples of intelligent uses of wind energy”, he pointed out, at the same time promoting a better use of renewable energies.

The three competing teams which did not make the podium, were the Technical University of Denmark, Zefyros, and Team Baltic Thunder from the University of Applied Sciences Kiel and the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel.