Introduction

My name is Michael and I am the team lead for the WiscWind competition team at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Our team has grown this year to almost 65 engineering students across various disciplines. I am an electrical engineering major and have made an axial-flux permanent magnet synchronous PCB generator for my competition team. I spend my time working on making the best small-scale wind turbine possible for a relatively low cost. We compete in the U.S. Department of Energy's Collegiate Wind Competition where we have to build a scale wind turbine. I have built the generator with PCBs I have already ordered from PCBWay and it worked out perfectly, but I wanted to try ordering them with a thicker copper weight to maximize power efficiency. I am excited to try to make the machine better with PCBWay's help!

Team Photo

From the competition in 2021-2022*

Generator

The generator is designed as a coreless axial flux permanent magnet synchronous design. This design has proven to be efficient in other applications and is being applied to the wind turbine that our competition team is building. The design employs 9 coils with 20 turns per coil to yield a lower EMF and higher current at rated speeds to stay within operating parameters for the competition. The PCB is key to the success of the generator since it allows us to have a small air gap between the two magnetic rotors of the generator, being only 4mm. A PCB with proper copper thickness can offer an efficiency of over 95%--which is exceptional for our small-scale application where every watt counts!

Stator

The stator design is a 4-layer PCB with a size of 203.2 x 203.2 mm (circle). The copper weight requested is 6oz Cu for the inside and outside facing layers. There are some non-tented vias, but no text/silkscreen is necessary. The thickness requested is 1.6 mm as well.