Maya Breitenstein, a senior at Oak Park and River Forest High School, recently drew national attention with her project on offshore wind turbines.
Breitenstein, who has always been interested in environmental science and knew she wanted to do an engineering project to enter in the Junior Science and Humanities Symposia, decided to work with wind turbines, testing the stability of four different types.
In order to make her tests, Breitenstein had to build a wave simulator, then use it to calculate the stability of the various platforms. She also built four turbines: two barge platforms and two spar buoys. She tied off one of each type with taut cables, and the other with a catenary cable, which affords the platform more slack. She then used the wave simulator, and determined that the most stable arrangement was the spar buoy with catenary cabling. Breitenstein notes her findings are important because they enable offshore floating turbines to take advantage of more consistent, stable winds.
She wrote an original paper entitled ‘Engineering a Novel Prototype of Offshore Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines with Floating Foundations to Produce Clean Energy’, and followed that up with a 10-minute oral presentation, complete with PowerPoint graphics. She presented her findings to a panel of judges, who awarded her second place overall in the symposia.
School officials might have fun working with a banner printer on a festive banner congratulating Breitenstein on her accomplishment.
