For an undergrad design project I did a medium-sized downwind turbine design with a streamlined fairing running down the tower for the length of the blade. It would be attached to the nacelle & so rotate with it. It wouldn't completely eliminate the fatigue cycling but would reduce it somewhat. It was a decent enough idea to earn me a good mark, but I found enough downsides to not be surprised that it's never been put into practice as far as I know.
@@londonwestman1 Long time ago, but there was a fair bit of additional fibreglass. Making the tail of the fairing long enough to be effective meant the the turbine needed to be some way back from the tower, adding some structural mass and wear on bearings
Thank you very much Rosie for your insightful analysis whatever the subject. I always wondered why downwind micro-wind turbines like the Proven were not more popular, now I understand why the "Chopper" effect of the blade passing the tower has such an effect on the blade life, and the noise levels due to the aerodynamic effects and the spring loaded hinge system employed on the blades to allow for survival at high wind speeds. I would be immensely grateful to you if you could do an in-depth study of micro-wind generator design, particularly the Hugh Piggott style machines which are homemade and feature wooden blades .
We have a Proven 6kW one which has been OK for at least ten years. The noise isn't an issue at about 75m from the house. Whenever it's windy there's so much other noise that we don't hear the turbine. There's an additional benefit that you have less "stuff" pointing the blades the right way.
I like tiny air pressure tubes down the length of the blades to monitor the loading and then adjust the pitch to compensate for bending forces and efficiency.
I think due to the small angle approximation small cone and tilt angels make a lot of sense compared to 0°. But at larger angles the losses start to become significant. Therefore it seems to me a combination of all available possibilities makes the most sense.
Nice video and presentation. Thanks. Page 4:00 and up : the explanation for frequent flexing in the blade axis can cause fatigue in blade materials progressively into blade failure state. On the other hand text book teaches that flexing in the linear slope region below the yield section doesn’t cause fatigue. I guess the fatigue example was drawn from a marginally structured blade that flex next to its yield region, out of aggressive costing or ignorance.
Hi Rosie, I want to learn how to specify a Wind Turbine System for 5-10KW industrial applications. What are the Breaking Mechanisms, how electrical frequencies are controlled. What are the techniques and circuits used to control the frequencies....
I can't believe this video has less than 1000 views. Found your channel from undecided with Matt Ferrell. I feel like your channel is ripe for take off with its exceptional content. Just one suggestion that might help your channel grow more is to cover use of wind for power for residential use versus commercial/residential use. I say this because many channels devoted to off-grid homes or emergency power (prepping) are getting a lot if views on RUclips.
Thanks, that's a really nice comment! I think your suggestion about residential wind being popular is spot on. I made a couple of videos on vertical axis wind turbines recently and those have been by far the most popular on my channel. I plan more along those lines, along with other clean energy technologies (a few on energy storage coming up). Question for you: when you say you found my channel "from" Undecided, how did that happen? Was it RUclips suggesting it? Just helpful for me to understand how it all works! Thanks again for the nice comment 😀
@@EngineeringwithRosie sorry I got my channels mixed up. Your channel was mentioned directly by "Just have a think" in this video around the 2:45 mark. ruclips.net/video/gcSnwW5v3f8/видео.html Just have a think and undecided with Matt Ferrell are similar channels but I see them more as general science channels. Because of your first hand expertise with wind power engineering, I could see your channel going more the route of solar power with Will Prowse if you wanted to add some focus on residential wind.
@@EngineeringwithRosie For me the video about VAWT vs HAWT showed up in my suggestions. Last quarter at Uni I did a project about recycling wind turbine blades (solvolysis, pyrolysis, cement co-processing etc.) so i figured google figured out I liked wind turbines. But after seeing a plug in Matt's channel a few days later my guess is that the algorithm liked your video and recommended it to a lot of people
Rosie, excellent explanations, especially about fatiguing, using the paper clip. Why aren’t wind-turbine blades made with a helix or twist as are ship propellers, or airplane props, or window and table top fans, to match the air speed? One suggestion… you’re using “further” when it should be “farther”. “Farther” is used for physical distance, like “Drive farther north”, whereas “further” is used for metaphorical distance, as in “Develop your concept further”. It’s easy to remember when to use farther because in contains the word “far”. Everything else was very well done.
Good idea, but I think black color will observe more heat and blade life might deteriorate much earlier (Blade are made of resine and glass fiber). Lot of regulations implemented to avoid wind turbine in Bird nesting area, also lot of research is going on LIDAR etc... www.audubon.org/magazine/spring-2018/how-new-technology-making-wind-farms-safer-birds
Yes you are absolutely right! They design blades with this in mind, but it's tricky. The topic is called "fluid structure interaction" if you want to look it up, and there have been many academic papers written on the topic 😊
Would definitely engage with Aerospace Engineers, with this experience, to suggest ways of analysing present Turbines, mabe vibration sensors?, and then suggest designs for minimising problems and so on. NASA stuff.
I make small windmill. have you look at New Zealand Windmill . in how they are moving the blades around the towns . There are some big windmill farm in NZ.
Greetings from Ireland. I'm assembling a 5kw wind turbine which is offset on the tower axis (vertical) and has a tail blade or vane. The instructions are very vague. It's not obvious how to pitch the blades, they are fixed in position on the hub only, one angle is very shallow, pretty much flat against the wind and the next position is tilted a lot. Any suggestions or advise?
Hi Rosie.. why not make the blade front with carbon fiber and the back with a pressure resistent material? like oak or what they use in wooden propellers
What about reducing the diameter of the tower by using stronger alloy metals or something. Probably too expensive material wise I suppose. Or how about a tower with a hole in it at the point on the tower that the tips of the blades pass. Could the tower be built in two parts (each with a hole that line up with the other). Two sections would be easier to transport I would think. The place where the hole in the tower is could be reinforced internally with some kind of bracing/scaffold) if the hole weakens the tower. Maybe this could make the assessment of the blades easier because each blade could be rotated until they are at the hole and inspected for damage. How are turbine blades inspected anyway?
Cyclic pitch has to be worse for fatigue loading, and it will affect the whole structure not just the blades / rotor. Helicopters experience a lot of vibration transmitting down the shaft into the body when they are using a lot of cyclic. Pre-curving makes every sense. They're going to strain under load whether you do this or not. Only downfall is that the area presented to the wing increases as the wind speeds up and the disc flattens out. Really in this light it wants to be behind the tower.
Hi Rosie, awesome videos really! what software do you use to run simulations in your videos? I have seen couple of simulations come up in your videos so it got me curious. Thanks
when I thought about wind power end the 90ties I thought the wind tower best could be built on floating rafts or small made islands so you can build them within reach and move them if the area is no longer or temporarily not suitable and with wave harnessing there is an extra energy possibility.
Engineering seems mostly to be about balancing the drawbacks of lots of clever ideas. Every innovative idea seems to come with a big but. Sir Mixalot would approve.
Your timing is impeccable! I just started experiencing this problem on the Mark V. Since I'm of a smaller variety, I'm going to attempt to just strengthen the blade, but I will definitely keep the bent blade away from the tower in mind.
@@EngineeringwithRosie have you ever heard of the Fawt wind turbine? Some bloke 3D printed a small thing, but it's design has my attention. ruclips.net/video/jEQ8YhStmXw/видео.html Try to imagine this Fawt design with a archimedes screw pointing up. Could be interesting.
@@EngineeringwithRosie as luck or fate or both would have it, the act of making my blades a tad stronger have resulted in a slight push forward. Regardless, I'll take it! Cheerio!
I know this is really part of another topic, which is controlling max speed, but in effect it accomplishes the same thing, which is changing the angle of attack for the blades, so they don't catch as much wind.
Most of the time they don't. Some adjust the pitch angle when the blade is down to compensate for lower wind speed, but it is not worth the added wear on components.
One could tilt the tower, creating something like the London Eye. The available yaw would no longer be 360 degrees, so I guess it would only be a useful solution in locations where the wind direction is very stable. Such a tower might be cheaper than a conventional tower, because the legs will always be in compression while the cable stays will always be in tension.
Why is the pre-bending better than increasing the cone angle respectively? - Oh, is it because in mid to heavyish wind the pre-bending approaches zero and thus the blade approaches optimality, whereas with the respective cone angle the same optimality would not be achieved.. Well, I still find this a non-trivial design choice 😅 - The cone angeled blades could be designed to function bent aerodynamically good, and the mechanical manufacturing would be done in straight [unbent] shape [but allow in-use bending], assuming this is a good trade off. Thanks for great videos😅
What stops changing the angle of a blade, like for helicopters? It might not be effective for all windmills but it should work for some. Also, a shallow angle would not be best performance for high speeds of wind and blade rotation.
The rotating blades cause turbulence every time they pass in front of the post (tower that holds up the blade). There is this wobbling post they use for collecting wind power and converting it into electricity. The post of a wind turbine could have a sheath around it that flexes to collect the energy that buffets the post when the blades pass the post. Maybe vertical axis turbines could be placed around the post, going up the tower. A tower that was 20 metres high could have 20 vats 1 metre long.
You explained the topic very well. I feel the control system act the major role in avoiding blade tip to tower hit, High wind and turbulence will make turbine crazy what is your opinion? 3:53 Which was the simulation software used?
I would curve the upper part of the tower away from the wind to have the maximal curvature where the tip of the blade would hit. The upper part of the tower would have to be the one turning with the wind.
It might be a uneducated suggestion but what if the tower itself was allowed to bend? In high winds the nacelle would angle up moving the blades away from the base where strike is most likely, in lower winds it reverts to vertical so you recover efficiency, yes there would be a potential issue with fatigue loading on the tower.
I am not engeneer, but what i see that wind goes in gusts. If the tower bends, there will be back and forth oscillatoons and blades more likely to hit?
I wouldn't choose one solution. I would run a large number of simulations covering combinations of different amounts of possible parameters - tip bend, cone angle, wind speed etc - in the hope that there will be a 'sweet spot' where the combination is most effective/least loss.
Actually had a tower strike on my homemade 70cm turbine earlier this year. Strengthening the blades worked out fine for me. I think most modern turbines use a combination of every concept. The Siemens SWT-3.6-120 is a good example. www.wind-turbine-models.com/turbines/646-siemens-swt-3.6-120-onshore?picture=d2xGt8q6Tml
That picture illustrates it really well, thanks! Your homemade turbine sounds cool, did you make it as an interesting engineering project, or to save money on electricity or something else? How is it going now that you fixed your tower strike issue?
@@EngineeringwithRosie I made the turbine mainly because it's a fun and interesting engineering project. It's only 70 centimeters in diameter, so it doesn't produce a lot of power. It only lights up a few LEDs on top of the tower. Since I upgraded the blades the turbine is working very well. Currently I'm thinking about designing a slightly larger 3D printed turbine that could generate 100 watts and uploding it on Thingiverse so everyone can print it.
In heavy wind conditions that might bend the blades into the tower why not feather the blade? Change the angle of the blade and present less surface to the wind? Most likely all turbines in the high wind area would be producing close to nameplate capacity and the extra electricity wouldn't be needed. A small loss could be tolerated.
@@Bendigo1 Correct. That's what they do. They feather the blades in order to dump wind off the blade in order to not overload it. Just like one eases the sails on a sailboat to deal with winds too strong for the amount of sail one has set.
Ah amateur's hour: I would like to see a bladeless turbine. Like the bladeless fans that only has a small fan in the base, but in reverse driven by the suction from the stationary ring. No large movable parts and generator and turbine at ground level, likely no gear box needed either.
Thanks for commenting Alex 😊 What do you mean by "fishbones"? Do you mean using ribs in the blade structure like a model aeroplane, or are you talking about using the same material as fishbones? Or maybe something totally different!
It's easy right? Just don't code any collision detection and the blades can pass right through the tower. Better yet, just don't code the force of gravity and you don't even need a tower! Cheaper to manufacture AND install!
Love the mix with illustrations and real footage!
Thank you!
Hi Rosie, how about something on Wind farm layout? Thanks for doing these videos
For an undergrad design project I did a medium-sized downwind turbine design with a streamlined fairing running down the tower for the length of the blade. It would be attached to the nacelle & so rotate with it. It wouldn't completely eliminate the fatigue cycling but would reduce it somewhat.
It was a decent enough idea to earn me a good mark, but I found enough downsides to not be surprised that it's never been put into practice as far as I know.
Interesting. Can you recall the top downsides?
@@londonwestman1 Long time ago, but there was a fair bit of additional fibreglass. Making the tail of the fairing long enough to be effective meant the the turbine needed to be some way back from the tower, adding some structural mass and wear on bearings
Thank you very much Rosie for your insightful analysis whatever the subject.
I always wondered why downwind micro-wind turbines like the Proven were not more popular, now I understand why the "Chopper" effect of the blade passing the tower has such an effect on the blade life, and the noise levels due to the aerodynamic effects and the spring loaded hinge system employed on the blades to allow for survival at high wind speeds.
I would be immensely grateful to you if you could do an in-depth study of micro-wind generator design, particularly the Hugh Piggott style machines which are homemade and feature wooden blades .
We have a Proven 6kW one which has been OK for at least ten years. The noise isn't an issue at about 75m from the house. Whenever it's windy there's so much other noise that we don't hear the turbine.
There's an additional benefit that you have less "stuff" pointing the blades the right way.
I like how well you explain the reasons for the designs.
I like tiny air pressure tubes down the length of the blades to monitor the loading and then adjust the pitch to compensate for bending forces and efficiency.
I think due to the small angle approximation small cone and tilt angels make a lot of sense compared to 0°. But at larger angles the losses start to become significant. Therefore it seems to me a combination of all available possibilities makes the most sense.
lmao the cloud blowing at the blades
Nice video and presentation. Thanks.
Page 4:00 and up : the explanation for frequent flexing in the blade axis can cause fatigue in blade materials progressively into blade failure state.
On the other hand text book teaches that flexing in the linear slope region below the yield section doesn’t cause fatigue.
I guess the fatigue example was drawn from a marginally structured blade that flex next to its yield region, out of aggressive costing or ignorance.
Thanks so much for doing this. I have learned a lot.
Hi Rosie, I want to learn how to specify a Wind Turbine System for 5-10KW industrial applications. What are the Breaking Mechanisms, how electrical frequencies are controlled. What are the techniques and circuits used to control the frequencies....
Thanks Rosie. How do engineers prevent blade flutter in wind turbines? Do they account for changes in air density in their calculations?
I can't believe this video has less than 1000 views. Found your channel from undecided with Matt Ferrell. I feel like your channel is ripe for take off with its exceptional content. Just one suggestion that might help your channel grow more is to cover use of wind for power for residential use versus commercial/residential use. I say this because many channels devoted to off-grid homes or emergency power (prepping) are getting a lot if views on RUclips.
Thanks, that's a really nice comment! I think your suggestion about residential wind being popular is spot on. I made a couple of videos on vertical axis wind turbines recently and those have been by far the most popular on my channel. I plan more along those lines, along with other clean energy technologies (a few on energy storage coming up).
Question for you: when you say you found my channel "from" Undecided, how did that happen? Was it RUclips suggesting it? Just helpful for me to understand how it all works!
Thanks again for the nice comment 😀
@@EngineeringwithRosie sorry I got my channels mixed up. Your channel was mentioned directly by "Just have a think" in this video around the 2:45 mark. ruclips.net/video/gcSnwW5v3f8/видео.html Just have a think and undecided with Matt Ferrell are similar channels but I see them more as general science channels. Because of your first hand expertise with wind power engineering, I could see your channel going more the route of solar power with Will Prowse if you wanted to add some focus on residential wind.
@@EngineeringwithRosie For me the video about VAWT vs HAWT showed up in my suggestions. Last quarter at Uni I did a project about recycling wind turbine blades (solvolysis, pyrolysis, cement co-processing etc.) so i figured google figured out I liked wind turbines. But after seeing a plug in Matt's channel a few days later my guess is that the algorithm liked your video and recommended it to a lot of people
I have a question. Could switching off generator loading and a free spinning turbine unbends those blades?
Rosie, excellent explanations, especially about fatiguing, using the paper clip. Why aren’t wind-turbine blades made with a helix or twist as are ship propellers, or airplane props, or window and table top fans, to match the air speed? One suggestion… you’re using “further” when it should be “farther”. “Farther” is used for physical distance, like “Drive farther north”, whereas “further” is used for metaphorical distance, as in “Develop your concept further”. It’s easy to remember when to use farther because in contains the word “far”. Everything else was very well done.
Wind turbine blades are indeed made with twist to match the relative air velocity, it's just harder to see on the long, slender blades :)
Regarding bird strikes , is there any validity to coloring one blade black or dark to help birds avoid the blades .
Thank you for your work.
I don't actually know. I am working on a video on birds now, I will add that to the list of possible solutions to investigate. Thanks for commenting!
Good idea, but I think black color will observe more heat and blade life might deteriorate much earlier (Blade are made of resine and glass fiber).
Lot of regulations implemented to avoid wind turbine in Bird nesting area, also lot of research is going on LIDAR etc... www.audubon.org/magazine/spring-2018/how-new-technology-making-wind-farms-safer-birds
if upwind turbine got hit by wind from the back, is the upwind turbine works like a downwind turbine ?. Sorry for my English....
The whole turbine head and nacelle would rotate so that the wind approached from the front again :)
would it be possible that under heavy loading the blade would twist. reducing the aerodynamics and load?
Yes you are absolutely right! They design blades with this in mind, but it's tricky. The topic is called "fluid structure interaction" if you want to look it up, and there have been many academic papers written on the topic 😊
Would definitely engage with Aerospace Engineers, with this experience, to suggest ways of analysing present Turbines, mabe vibration sensors?, and then suggest designs for minimising problems and so on. NASA stuff.
I enjoy the content but your animated expressions more so. Your charming personality could make Geology interesting.
Hi Rosie. The top of Tower can swing how many milimeter (allowable limited) when Wind Turbin work. Thank you!!!
Nice video
I make small windmill. have you look at New Zealand Windmill . in how they are moving the blades around the towns . There are some big windmill farm in NZ.
Greetings from Ireland. I'm assembling a 5kw wind turbine which is offset on the tower axis (vertical) and has a tail blade or vane. The instructions are very vague. It's not obvious how to pitch the blades, they are fixed in position on the hub only, one angle is very shallow, pretty much flat against the wind and the next position is tilted a lot. Any suggestions or advise?
Talk about aeroelasticity in wind turbine blades please
Blades bend is towards pole of wind turbine or away?
Hi Rosie.. why not make the blade front with carbon fiber and the back with a pressure resistent material? like oak or what they use in wooden propellers
What about reducing the diameter of the tower by using stronger alloy metals or something. Probably too expensive material wise I suppose.
Or how about a tower with a hole in it at the point on the tower that the tips of the blades pass. Could the tower be built in two parts (each with a hole that line up with the other). Two sections would be easier to transport I would think. The place where the hole in the tower is could be reinforced internally with some kind of bracing/scaffold) if the hole weakens the tower. Maybe this could make the assessment of the blades easier because each blade could be rotated until they are at the hole and inspected for damage. How are turbine blades inspected anyway?
Cyclic pitch has to be worse for fatigue loading, and it will affect the whole structure not just the blades / rotor. Helicopters experience a lot of vibration transmitting down the shaft into the body when they are using a lot of cyclic.
Pre-curving makes every sense. They're going to strain under load whether you do this or not. Only downfall is that the area presented to the wing increases as the wind speeds up and the disc flattens out. Really in this light it wants to be behind the tower.
Hi Rosie, awesome videos really! what software do you use to run simulations in your videos? I have seen couple of simulations come up in your videos so it got me curious. Thanks
It looks like ASHES to me
when I thought about wind power end the 90ties I thought the wind tower best could be built on floating rafts or small made islands so you can build them within reach and move them if the area is no longer or temporarily not suitable and with wave harnessing there is an extra energy possibility.
Engineering seems mostly to be about balancing the drawbacks of lots of clever ideas. Every innovative idea seems to come with a big but. Sir Mixalot would approve.
no free lunch, sadly.
Your timing is impeccable! I just started experiencing this problem on the Mark V. Since I'm of a smaller variety, I'm going to attempt to just strengthen the blade, but I will definitely keep the bent blade away from the tower in mind.
Oh that's so funny, glad this came at a good time for you 😀
@@EngineeringwithRosie have you ever heard of the Fawt wind turbine? Some bloke 3D printed a small thing, but it's design has my attention.
ruclips.net/video/jEQ8YhStmXw/видео.html
Try to imagine this Fawt design with a archimedes screw pointing up. Could be interesting.
@@EngineeringwithRosie as luck or fate or both would have it, the act of making my blades a tad stronger have resulted in a slight push forward. Regardless, I'll take it! Cheerio!
I know this is really part of another topic, which is controlling max speed, but in effect it accomplishes the same thing, which is changing the angle of attack for the blades, so they don't catch as much wind.
How do engineers deal with the difference in wind speed between the top and bottom of the swept area?
Most of the time they don't.
Some adjust the pitch angle when the blade is down to compensate for lower wind speed, but it is not worth the added wear on components.
One could tilt the tower, creating something like the London Eye. The available yaw would no longer be 360 degrees, so I guess it would only be a useful solution in locations where the wind direction is very stable.
Such a tower might be cheaper than a conventional tower, because the legs will always be in compression while the cable stays will always be in tension.
Towers are very heavy, so you would want to have them vertical to avoid stress on tower and foundation.
Its also easier to install.
What if you modify the tower locally?
Why is the pre-bending better than increasing the cone angle respectively?
- Oh, is it because in mid to heavyish wind the pre-bending approaches zero and thus the blade approaches optimality, whereas with the respective cone angle the same optimality would not be achieved..
Well, I still find this a non-trivial design choice 😅 - The cone angeled blades could be designed to function bent aerodynamically good, and the mechanical manufacturing would be done in straight [unbent] shape [but allow in-use bending], assuming this is a good trade off.
Thanks for great videos😅
What stops changing the angle of a blade, like for helicopters? It might not be effective for all windmills but it should work for some. Also, a shallow angle would not be best performance for high speeds of wind and blade rotation.
I like you way talk love u ❤❤❤❤❤
The rotating blades cause turbulence every time they pass in front of the post (tower that holds up the blade). There is this wobbling post they use for collecting wind power and converting it into electricity. The post of a wind turbine could have a sheath around it that flexes to collect the energy that buffets the post when the blades pass the post.
Maybe vertical axis turbines could be placed around the post, going up the tower. A tower that was 20 metres high could have 20 vats 1 metre long.
You explained the topic very well. I feel the control system act the major role in avoiding blade tip to tower hit, High wind and turbulence will make turbine crazy what is your opinion?
3:53 Which was the simulation software used?
The software is Ashes:
bit.ly/3cpasvJ
And yep, (very) strong winds and turbulence are not great for wind turbines, like you say!
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thank you 🙏
I would curve the upper part of the tower away from the wind to have the maximal curvature where the tip of the blade would hit. The upper part of the tower would have to be the one turning with the wind.
It might be a uneducated suggestion but what if the tower itself was allowed to bend? In high winds the nacelle would angle up moving the blades away from the base where strike is most likely, in lower winds it reverts to vertical so you recover efficiency, yes there would be a potential issue with fatigue loading on the tower.
I am not engeneer, but what i see that wind goes in gusts. If the tower bends, there will be back and forth oscillatoons and blades more likely to hit?
Am I seeing wrong or is the pre-bend towards the tower rather than away from it?
If you see blades bending towards the tower, that's not prebend, it's blades bending from the wind. Or they have been installed wrong 😂
@@EngineeringwithRosie OK, I guess that makes sense. I was thinking of e.g. the turbines at 2:45. I thought the blades were actually shaped like that.
I wouldn't choose one solution. I would run a large number of simulations covering combinations of different amounts of possible parameters - tip bend, cone angle, wind speed etc - in the hope that there will be a 'sweet spot' where the combination is most effective/least loss.
That is pretty much what wind turbine conceptual designers are doing, maybe you need to get a job in the industry!
Hallo good 👍
Actually had a tower strike on my homemade 70cm turbine earlier this year. Strengthening the blades worked out fine for me.
I think most modern turbines use a combination of every concept. The Siemens SWT-3.6-120 is a good example.
www.wind-turbine-models.com/turbines/646-siemens-swt-3.6-120-onshore?picture=d2xGt8q6Tml
That picture illustrates it really well, thanks!
Your homemade turbine sounds cool, did you make it as an interesting engineering project, or to save money on electricity or something else? How is it going now that you fixed your tower strike issue?
@@EngineeringwithRosie I made the turbine mainly because it's a fun and interesting engineering project. It's only 70 centimeters in diameter, so it doesn't produce a lot of power. It only lights up a few LEDs on top of the tower. Since I upgraded the blades the turbine is working very well.
Currently I'm thinking about designing a slightly larger 3D printed turbine that could generate 100 watts and uploding it on Thingiverse so everyone can print it.
This video doesn't have enough comments.
A rope from the tip of each blade, the other end being held by an executive ...
In heavy wind conditions that might bend the blades into the tower why not feather the blade? Change the angle of the blade and present less surface to the wind? Most likely all turbines in the high wind area would be producing close to nameplate capacity and the extra electricity wouldn't be needed. A small loss could be tolerated.
They actually do that on large turbines. In high winds they angle the blades into the wind, reducing the rpms and decreasing the stress on the blades.
@@Bendigo1 Correct. That's what they do. They feather the blades in order to dump wind off the blade in order to not overload it. Just like one eases the sails on a sailboat to deal with winds too strong for the amount of sail one has set.
Ah amateur's hour: I would like to see a bladeless turbine. Like the bladeless fans that only has a small fan in the base, but in reverse driven by the suction from the stationary ring. No large movable parts and generator and turbine at ground level, likely no gear box needed either.
...it has to be more “fishbones“ in the structure, so it will be more sustainable )))
Thanks for commenting Alex 😊 What do you mean by "fishbones"? Do you mean using ribs in the blade structure like a model aeroplane, or are you talking about using the same material as fishbones? Or maybe something totally different!
@@EngineeringwithRosie ...yeah somthing like aircraft wing design and whales spine/bones structure combine...
Hmm. I always just took it for granted that they wouldn't hit the tower. See why I'm a programmer and not an engineer? lol
It's easy right? Just don't code any collision detection and the blades can pass right through the tower. Better yet, just don't code the force of gravity and you don't even need a tower! Cheaper to manufacture AND install!
The only other way: shorter blades... Stronger, less bending, less efficient, but no probs! --No point in pushing the design limits too far....
OK, I have found a simple effective and cheap solution but won't tell unless I am Asked.