Low-cost Triangular Lattice Towers for Small Wind Turbines
Date
2013-09-24
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Abstract
This thesis focuses on the study of low-cost steel and bamboo triangular lattice towers for small wind turbines. The core objective is to determine the material properties of bamboo and assess the feasibility of bamboo towers. Using the experimentally determined buckling resistance, elastic modulus, and Poisson’s ratio, a 12 m high triangular lattice tower for a 500W wind turbine has been modeled as a tripod to formulate the analytical solutions for the stresses and tower deflections, which enables design of the tower based on buckling strength of tower legs. The tripod formulation combines the imposed loads, the base distance between the legs and tower height, and cross-sectional dimensions of the tower legs. The tripod model was used as a reference for the initial design of the bamboo tower and extended to finite element analysis. A 12 m high steel lattice tower was also designed for the same turbine to serve as a comparison to the bamboo tower. The primary result of this work indicates that bamboo is a valid structural material.
The commercial software package ANSYS APDL was used to carry out the tower analysis, evaluate the validity of the tripod model, and extend the analysis for the tower design. For this purpose, a 12 m high steel lattice tower for a 500 W wind turbine was examined. Comparison of finite element analysis and analytical solution has shown that tripod model can be accurately used in the design of lattice towers. The tower designs were based on the loads and safety requirements of international standard for small wind turbine safety, IEC 61400-2. For connecting the bamboo sections in the lattice tower, a steel-bamboo adhesive joint combined with conventional lashing has been proposed. Also, considering the low durability of bamboo, periodic replacement of tower members has been proposed. The result of this study has established that bamboo could be used to construct cost-effective and lightweight lattice towers for wind turbines of 500 Watt capacity or smaller. This study concludes that further work on joining of bamboo sections and weathering is required to fully utilize bamboo in practice. In comparison to steel towers, bamboo towers are economically feasible and easy to build. The tower is extremely lightweight, which justifies its application in remote areas, where the transportation is difficult.
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Energy, Materials Science, Mechanical
Citation
Adhikari, R. C. (2013). Low-cost Triangular Lattice Towers for Small Wind Turbines (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/26794