Turbine Design and Reliability:
Drop-in Turbine Generator System
Led by
Bill Baxley, P.E.
Affiliated Home Campus: Harbor Branch
Affiliated Department: Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center
PROJECT
Justin Fikes worked alongside Bill Baxley P.E. over the course of 10 weeks to help bring Mr. Baxley’s patented Ocean Current Turbine to fruition. The objective of this project was to design a Towfish to transport ocean current turbines into their underwater housing assembly. Along with this task, Justin helped test a multitude of turbine blades for data collection and processing to determine which design would extract the most energy. Justin built supporting structures to provide a more efficient means of testing rotors, designed a MATLAB program calculating Lift/Drag forces associated with the deployment of the rotors, and created a SolidWorks design of a Towfish which he hopes will soon be put to use.
