The goal of this project is to have a graphical tool to help the visualization and analysis of a particular type of turbines, that I've chosen to refer to as Planetary Turbines.

These are a specific type of VAWT with a particularity: They need to be orientated accordingly to the direction of the wind. One of the main advantages of other types of vertical axis wind turbines is they are omnidirectional. They can work indistictly with the wind coming from any direction. Instead, this type of turbine do orient its blades so they can capture the most wind energy for every position. The mechanism is very similar to the sails orientation in the case of sailing boats.

Despite being a design that is many years old¹, you can hardly see models of this type in operation, and the existing documentation is very scarce. Probably the reason for the limited commercial success was due to the mechanical complexity as well as the appearance of other much simpler turbine models.

Regarding the name of the turbine, these are referred using different names such as panemone, cycloidal turbine, rotating blade turbine. The motion of the blades is similar to the motion of a planet, having a rotation and a translation movement. In this case, the rotation is the slow movement with just half a turn for every complete translation. So in this machine, for a blade one day lasts for two years and one year is just half a day. The naming is similar to the one used for planetary gears, having also rotation and traslation movements.

With this tool you can view the behaviour of the turbine under different configurations (modifying the wind direction and the vane orientation) and even modify the geometry (number of blades) of the turbine. You can find some additional information on IG

You can see a live demo here