Airborne Wind Energy
History of kite applications
13 September 2024
Outline
- Learning objectives
- Early history
- Middle ages
- Enlightenment
- Golden Age of Kites
- Aerial photography
- Meteorology
- Precursor for powered flight
- Rediscovery for power generation
- Rediscovery for sports
- Contemporary developments
- References
Origin of kites
The precise origin of the kite is obscure, however scholars believe it was developed either in China, Malasia, Indonesia or the South Pacific Islands (Polynesia).
A possible but controversial early finding is the kite painting in an Indonesian cave:
Exhibit: Canada Aviation and Space Museum, Cave paintings: Tari Travel
Polynesian fishing kites
Materials:
- Wood, rushes, feathers, and shells, which produced a rattle in flight.
- Thin strands of vine or braided fibers for flying/tethering line.
- A native bark cloth (tapa), leaves, and braided reeds were used for sail material.
Polynesian kite fishing
Ternate island in 1600 illustrated by Dutch expedition.
Chinese kites
Materials:
- Bamboo or similarly strong reed like branches for framing structure. Thin strands of vine or braided fibers for flying/tethering line.
- Woven cloth and later paper, were commonly used for sail material.
Left: Metropolitan Museum of Art, center: Smithsonian Museum, right: PBS Learning Media
Arrival of the kite in Europe
- By the 13th century, kite flying had spread by traders from
China
to Korea and across Asia to India and the Middle East. Each region
had developed a distinctive style of kite and cultural purpose for
flying them.
Mosaic of Marco Polo displayed in the Palazzo Doria-Tursi, in Genoa, Italy (1867).
- The Greek already knew kites around the 4th century BC.
- In the late 13th century, European explorer, Marco
Polo, describes
in his book from 1295 kites and their man-lifting capabilities after seeing Chinese merchants using kites to determine whether a voyage would be prosperous or not. - Kite flying spread throughout Europe between 14th and 15th centuries with mentions by Vasco da Gama, Giovanni Della Porta, and William Shakespeare.
- Sailors also brought kites back from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Kites were regarded as curiosities at first and had little impact on European culture.
Use for warfare
Renaissance of 15th & 16th centuries
- Period in European history marking the transition from the
Middle Ages to modernity.
- A spirit of initiative and invention lead to
significant advances
in mechanics, chemistry and metallurgy, astronomy and
surveying, the art of navigation, and the measurement of time. - The Mysteries of
Nature and Art was written by John Bate in
1634 as a practical guide for amateur scientific experiments. - It inspired Isaac Newton during his younger years, in particular the section on fire Drakes, kites with firecrackers tied to their tails.
- It contains one of the earliest depictions of fireworks and their preparation to be detailed in the English language, in a similar manner to the preceding De la pirotechnia
The Mysteries of Nature and Art
Meteorology
Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow.
- First recorded weather experiments with kites were performed
in 1749 by two University of Glasgow students, Alexander Wilson
and Thomas Melville.
- Their interest was the possible temperature
variation in the
atmosphere and at the time, kites were the only means to access
higher altitudes. - The scientists built six paper kites, each carrying a small thermometer protected by layers of cloth.
- Each payload had a slow burning fuse and a white ribbon attached.
- The fuse allowed a timed separation of the payload from the kite.
- The white ribbons decelerated the falling payload and signaled to the scientists.
- This experiment was the first recorded attempt to collect scientific data with kites and to use a train of kites.
Electricity
Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery
- Benjamin
Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to
prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that
appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm.
- On 15 June 1752, he may possibly
have conducted his well-known
kite experiment in Philadelphia, successfully extracting sparks
from a cloud. - Franklin described the experiment in the
Pennsylvania Gazette on
19 October 1752, without mentioning that he himself had performed it. - This account was read to the Royal Society on December 21 and printed as such in the Philosophical Transactions.
- Franklin was careful to stand on an insulator, keeping dry under a roof to avoid the danger of electric shock.
Engineering
- George
Pocock was a schoolteacher in Bristol experimenting
with
man-lifting kites starting in 1820.
- In 1826 he patented the design of the
Charvolant, a buggy that
was pulled by two kites on a single line of 457–459 m. - Four control lines to the kites,
which were fed out or pulled in by
large spools mounted on the front of the carriage, provided a method of steering. - The driver also had to steer the carriage by means of a T-bar which set the direction of the front wheels.
- The driver also was responsible for the brake, an iron bar mounted on the carriage which dug into the road when the lever was pulled.
- Average travel speed with several passengers was 32 km/h.
- On a joint trip of 182 km, one of the three participating Charvolants sailed past the mail coach, which at the time was the fastest means of passenger transportation.
- Initial successes because technology was circumventing taxation of horse-powered carriages, however, ultimately too complex to survive.
Aerial photography
Photos: Collection l’espace photographique Arthur Batut / Archives départementales du Tarn
Bowed diamond kite (1891)
- William A.
Eddy was a journalist from New Jersey who
investigated how to lift meteorological and photographic
equipment reliably with kites.
- Standard diamond kites used a tail
for improved flight
stability, which was problematic for chaining several kites
to reach higher altitudes. - Inspired by the bowed kite from Java, the Malay
kite, which
was stable without a tail, he developed the bowed diamond
kite. - In 1892, he was invited to the Blue Hill Observatory near Boston (founded 1885) to demonstrate his new lifting technology, which subsequently was adopted.
- The scientific significance of his patented design was short-lived, due to the advent of Lawrence Hargrave’s rectangular box kites.
- Nevertheless, in 1910, a train of ten Eddy kites reached an altitude of 7128 m and set a height record for several years.
Box kite (1893)
- Lawrence
Hargrave was a British-born Australian engineer,
explorer, astronomer, inventor and aeronautical pioneer.
- Since 1872 he worked at the Sydney Observatory as astronomer.
- Hargrave was a passionate believer in free
communication in
the scientific community, refusing to patent his inventions. - Following a period of extensive experimentation, he
converged
on the box kite design, which appeared him to be the perfect
flying device for human flight. - Hargrave’s box kite was illustrated internationally in subsequent years and is considered a critical link in the development of the European airplane.
- Essentially, the box kite design doubled the wing surface area and by that also the lift, while providing excellent structural stability.
- The cellular structure with vertical wing sections was inherently stable which was an important goal for early aeronautical engineers.
Man-lifting kite train (1901)
Kite train by Samuel Franklin Cody in the UK.
Cody War Kite (1901)
- Samuel
Franklin Cody was a US Wild West showman and
early pioneer of manned flight.
- He was also the first man to fly an aeroplane built
in Britain,
on 16 October 1908. - He is most famous for his work on the large kites
known as
Cody War-Kites, that were used by the British before World War
I as a smaller alternative to balloons for artillery spotting. - He combined Hargrave’s box kites with flexible
winglets as
a passive depower mechanism and for flight stability. - In 1908, the War Office officially adopted Cody’s kites for the Balloon Companies he had been training.
- He later moved to powered aviation, and died on 7 August 1913 when his latest design, the Cody Floatplane, crashed near Farnborough.
Wikimedia Commons
Marvin Kite (1897)
- Charles Frederick Marvin was an American meteorologist.
- In 1883, he was appointed to the United States Army
Signal
Corps of the United States Army. - In 1891, he was transferred to the
newly created civilian Weather
Bureau, where he became professor of meteorology in 1903. - In 1896 he won a competition with
his article “The Mechanics
and Equilibrium of Kites” which was published one year later in
“Monthly Weather Review”. - From 1897 on his radical redesign of the Hargrave box kite was used at 17 US weather stations.
- While Hargrave’s box kite allowed a degree of twisting along the span, Marvin’s redesign used an entirely rigid box frame.
- The kite was built in tree sizes, a standard version, a smaller one for strong wind, and a larger one for light wind.
Diamond kite (1904)
- Wladimir
Köppen was a Russian-German geographer,
meteorologist, climatologist and botanist.
- In 1875, he was appointed as head of the new
Division of Marine
Meteorology at the German naval observatory in Hamburg. - He is considered to be the principal
founder of climatology
and meteorology. - To improve his weather predictions, Köppen started using kites in 1898, first building several Malay kites and a Hargrave box kite.
- In 1903 he established a larger kite station in Groß Borstel, a village outside of Hamburg.
- The facility included a rotatable wooden house, with an engine-powered winch.
- The kites were flown to about 2 to 4 km altitude, measuring air pressure, temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction.
- In 1904 Köppen constructed a box kite with rhomboidal cross section and winglets, which he name diamond kite.
University of Graz Library
Lindenberg N-Kite (1900-1905)
- Richard Assmann was a German meteorologist and physician.
- He is considered a co-founder of atmospheric
science, the study
of the Earth’s atmosphere and its various inner-working physical
processes. - In 1900 he founded the
Aeronautical Observatory in Berlin-Tegel,
and from 1905 until 1914 was a first director of the Aeronautical
Observatory Lindenberg. - The Lindenberg N-Kite (Normaldrachen) is the result of a longer series of tests, which was already started at the Aeronautical Observatory in Berlin-Tegel.
- Starting point for the scientists was the Marvin Kite, which was used by the US Weather Bureau.
- One point of improvement was the simplification of the box frame.
- The kite was built in three sizes, with 4, 6, and 7 horizontal wing surface area.
Research ship Gna (1907-1954)
for atmospheric resarch on lake Constance
Lindenberg R-Kite (Regulierdrachen)
- Rudolf
Grund was hired in 1907 as an apprentice by the
Lindenberg Observatory, participating in measurement
campaigns with balloons and kites and eventually became
head of flight operation.
- He is regarded the most important German
kite designer
for meteorological research. - He knew the shortcomings of N- and S-Kites and in 1916 patented a passive depower mechanism for box kites.
- His subsequent redesign, the “Regulierdrachen”, was flown for the first time in 1929.
- The adaptive kite combined the successful inner skeleton of the S-Kite with two innovations: a hinged connection of front and rear cells with an elastic member.
Werner Schmidt/wetterdrachen.de
Passive pitch mechanism (Grund patent 1916)
Low wind speed
- High angle of attack
- Traction force maximized
High wind speed
- Low angle of attack
- Traction force limited
Grund (1916)
Lindenberg R-Kite
Grund (1930)
Lindenberg observatory (1930)
- Most advanced observatory using kites
- 50 km SW of Berlin, Germany
- Fully 360° rotatable winch house
- Two flights per day
Werner Schmidt/wetterdrachen.de
Altitude world record with kites (1919)
Altitude world record with kites (1919)
- The altitude record was achieved with a train of eight Lindenberg S-Kites, developed by Herrmann Schreck
- The S-Kite showed better flight behavior than
the N-Kite - 15,000 m steel wire, 0.6 to 1.0 mm thick were
deployed - Eight kites with 10, 8 and 5 m2 wing surface
area were used
Wright brothers kites
Library of Congress
- The Wright
brothers were American aviation pioneers
generally credited with inventing, building, and flying
the world’s first successful motor-operated airplane.
In 1899, Wilbur built a biplane kite to test whether
warping the wings would roll the craft right and left.
The kite was controlled from the ground by four cables attached to two sticks.The brothers originally referred to this as wing twisting, but Octave Chanute later dubbed it “wing warping” and the name stuck.
The kite had a small horizontal tail attached to back middle strut. This was the last flying machine built by the Wrights to have a horizontal tail in the back until over a decade later, when the Wright Company began to manufacture the Wright Model B airplane.
Wing warping for roll control
Roll
control
Pitch
control
Library of Congress / animation by Clifford Barton
Lift and drag equation (1900)
The accepted equations for lift and drag were:
\(\begin{align} L & = k S \CL \vaexp{2} \\ D & = k S \CD \vaexp{2} \end{align}\)
where
\(L\) and \(D\) are the lift and drag forces in
pounds
\(k\) is the coefficient of air
pressure (Smeaton
coefficient)1
\(S\) is the total area of lifting
surface in square feet
\(\CL\) and \(\CD\) are the coefficients of lift and drag
(vary with wing shape)
\(\va\) is the apparent wind velocity
in miles per hour
The poor lift of the gliders led the brothers questioning the accuracy of the Smeaton coefficient, 0.005, which had been in use for over 100 years. Also doubting the accuracy of Lilienthal’s lift coefficient they conducted own wind tunnel experiments.
1In modern aerodynamic analysis, the dynamic pressure of the flow around the wing is used to describe the pressure dependence.
Tethered flying wind turbine (1935)
- Aloys van Gries headed the department of
aircraft statics at Berlin Adlershof during WW1.
- In 2021, he published a book on aircraft statics.
- In 1935, aged 70, he patented the concept to use kite
trains to lift an onboard wind turbine to higher altitudes.
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Oil crisis & renewable energies (1970-80)
Hermann
Oberth (1977):
Kite power station
- Kite-lifted shrouded wind turbines
- Targeting also jet streams
John F. Wellicome (1984)
Ship propulsive kites
- Crosswind maneuvering kite
- Outperforms other solutions
Crosswind kite power (1980)
Miles L. Loyd visiting a test of Makani’s Wing 4 prototype in 2010.
- Miles L. Loyd was an engineer working at the
Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory
- Over 40 years ago, Loyd published the paper
Crosswind
Kite Power one of the first theoretical works about using
kites for harnessing wind energy. - Although highly idealized, the analytical
model remains
an important foundation for follow-up models, where many of
the assumptions have been relaxed for higher accuracy. - Patent: US4251040A
Airborne vs ground-based conversion
Airborne energy conversion:
- Flying wing \(\leadsto\) shaft power
- Shaft power \(\leadsto\) electricity (\(\omega\uparrow\))
- Electricity \(\leadsto\) conductive tether
Ground-based energy conversion:
- Flying wing \(\leadsto\) traction force
- Traction force \(\leadsto\) shaft power (\(\omega\downarrow\))
- Shaft power \(\leadsto\) electricity
Regular vs crosswind kite
The pioneers
- Gijsbertus Adrianus Panhuise (1977): Patent on kitesurfing, no commercial interest
- Dieter Strasilla (~1980): Developed parachute- and kite-skiing systems
- Bruno and Dominique Legaignoux (1984): Patented an inflatable kite design
Inflatable surf kites
AWE as an engineering discipline (2005–now)
Textbook 2013
- First textbook on AWE
- Published 2013 with Springer
- 35 peer-reviewed chapters
- 611 pages
- 140k Accesses, 525 Citations as of October 2023
High-impact publication
Textbook 2018
- Second textbook on AWE
- Published 2018 with Springer
- 30 peer-reviewed chapters
- 752 pages
- 61k Accesses, 139 Citations as of October 2023
Second high-impact publication
Kitepower on PostNL Innovation Stamp (2021)
