棒球场更多电力

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圣路易斯和阿灵顿是美国最后两个在棒球场周围不担心电力短缺的人群。其他所有人都在考虑明年。

像往常一样,这包括克利夫兰印第安人队——但这次他们考虑的是体育场内的电力,而不仅仅是本垒板上的得分能力。到下赛季开始时,他们将在进步球场顶部安装一个 18 英尺宽的风力涡轮机。该涡轮机是一种有点古怪的螺旋设计,但这并非旨在实现仍然令人沮丧的垂直轴技术突破。相反,它是一种风力放大涡轮机,它在结构的侧面凹槽中安装了一堆微小的风车式叶片。设计师 马吉德·拉希迪 表示,这些凹槽可以引导风,并使其在经过物体时加速——想想大型建筑物如何将城市变成风洞,或者空气如何使曲线球下坠。嗯,这是为其他球队的投手准备的。拉希迪预计他的涡轮机将比不靠近圆柱体的涡轮机产生 三到四倍的电力

拉希迪曾说过,该涡轮机基本上利用了伯努利原理。风速在表面周围加速的方式与在飞机机翼上方加速的方式非常相似。在那里,它产生升力,在这里,它有望每年产生约 40,000 千瓦时——足以供几户家庭使用。该设计最初于 2009 年进行了测试,当时拉希迪的雇主克利夫兰州立大学在其一座建筑物的顶部安装了一个试验性涡轮机。


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那个涡轮机只有一个桶,风可以绕着它流动。那里的情况进展顺利,以至于下一个版本(经过高度更新,带有那些凹槽)应该在 2012 年 3 月的某个时候安装在进步球场顶部。该涡轮机解决了与风相关的两个问题:首先,它在低风速下发电,其次,它适用于大型螺旋桨式涡轮机无法安装的城市环境。

尽管如此,拉希迪似乎完全不知道该如何处理印第安人队的投球问题。

 

Scott Huler was born in 1959 in Cleveland and raised in that city's eastern suburbs. He graduated from Washington University in 1981; he was made a member of Phi Beta Kappa because of the breadth of his studies, and that breadth has been a signature of his writing work. He has written on everything from the death penalty to bikini waxing, from NASCAR racing to the stealth bomber, for such newspapers as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times and such magazines as ESPN, Backpacker, and Fortune. His award-winning radio work has been heard on "All Things Considered" and "Day to Day" on National Public Radio and on "Marketplace" and "Splendid Table" on American Public Media. He has been a staff writer for the Philadelphia Daily News and the Raleigh News & Observer and a staff reporter and producer for Nashville Public Radio. He was the founding and managing editor of the Nashville City Paper. He has taught at such colleges as Berry College and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

His books include Defining the Wind, about the Beaufort Scale of wind force, and No-Man's Lands, about retracing the journey of Odysseus.

His most recent book, On the Grid, was his sixth. His work has been included in such compilations as Appalachian Adventure and in such anthologies as Literary Trails of the North Carolina Piedmont, The Appalachian Trail Reader and Speed: Stories of Survival from Behind the Wheel.

For 2014-2015 Scott is a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT, which is funding his work on the Lawson Trek, an effort to retrace the journey of explorer John Lawson through the Carolinas in 1700-1701.

He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, the writer June Spence, and their two sons.

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