I think turbines can be made more energy-efficient by making the foils:

1) adaptive -- so that they gradually fade in density and resillience but maintain the strength to not fold back on themselves -- to overcome the flutter problem,

2) undulatory -- so that the energy that is stored in the vortical wing-tip whorls can be reused by a fish-tail-like whipping motion which will be supplied by a rudimentary ability to store and release energy -- created by modular networking

and 3) modularly networked -- so that each bit of the material that the adaptive foil is made out of is attached to each other bit but allows for expansion and also translates this expansion into energy -- so maybe each module would be magnetically suspended and the change in magnetic force could be translated into electricity.
-- JesusHChrist, Sep 07 2005

Turbine blades are a fascination of my former materials science prof. The great difficulty with them was to prevent them from stretching out under high heat and rpms, if I recall.
-- RayfordSteele, Sep 09 2005



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