Posted on 02/02/2023 9:56:52 AM PST by Leaning Right
The taller the wind turbine, the harder they fall. And they sure are falling.
Wind turbine failures are on the uptick, from Oklahoma to Sweden and Colorado to Germany, with all three of the major manufacturers admitting that the race to create bigger turbines has invited manufacturing issues, according to a report from Bloomberg.
(Excerpt) Read more at popularmechanics.com ...
O/T, but I remember the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota. The engineers didn’t factor in the added weight of new asphalt on the bridge.
I didn't know they had vaccinations in the middle ages. /s/
Burned down, fell over and then sank into the swamp.
I have a great idea. Place them offshore where the salt spray will degrade them quicker. And there are loads of offshore wind projects here and in Europe.
😜............................
I don't think it's all that mysterious. My uneducated guess is that they fall over in high winds because the wind blades fail to feather and the resulting wind load on the tower exceeds design limits.
Same reason a lot of windmills go up in flames, they overspeed the gearbox and generator because of a failure in the wind blade feathering system.
Apparently they never heard of easy-outs.
Gophers
New windmill design pattern:
I’m guessing the new pattern isn’t quite as stable.
(Hat tip to discostu, and his post #42)
Who knows maybe God doesn’t like them
Check out #18. The towers themselves are failing, not the footers or the bolts.
They do ... those laws are made of iron, written by God Himself. They WILL BE OBEYED, and they don't care how anybody feels about it.
There is about 30,000 lbs of scrap copper in there somewhere.
It’s like Tinkerbell. As more people express their waning belief in Globull Warming, the Windmills weaken and DIE.
Racism. The turbines are white.
IMH (mech eng) opinion, they underestimated the wind and resulting bending moment where the base of the wind turbine entered the ground.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Not quite..... I’ve been analyzing failures of IWTs for years and have seen many specific modes of failures... at least a dozen unique categories. However, the category that is the most common is fatigue... this can happen in many locations on an IWT and cause a failure but one of the most common locations is with the bolts in the tower flange sections. Take a look at the third picture at post 18... See how the flanges (top and bottom) have separated completely with almost zero damage? It almost looks like all the bolts have simply and simultaneously evaporated and in fact, they have... While the vibration due to the rotating mass could have had a role in the fatigue damage of the bolts, it more likely is just the result of the tower swaying in the wind and putting the bolts through endless cycles of varying stress. Then one bolt goes and puts the rest under even more stress.... however, since they all have been put through the same number of cycles, the remaining bolts are also near the end of their fatigue life and with a bit of an increase in wind that adds a bit more stress, they all start to pop just like popcorn... and down comes the tower. I could show many pictures just like this one... some where the separation at a flange is complete and some just like the picture 3 where it’s still hanging on by a a few bolts that act as the hinge point as it topples over.
“Correct. They should be being dismantled, not falling over willy nilly. They are corrupting my “view shed”. Remember when someone could stop a project by saying that?”
The world is 75% water and we are building windmills. We have technology to move fluids thousands of miles, technology to remove saline from water and technology to capture sunlight and convert it to electricity. And they are building windmills.
Wind turbine failures are on the uptick...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I suspect that the reason they are ‘on the uptick’ is simply because the number of them is always increasing and because fatigue is a cycle-dependent aspect to failures. Thus the longer they run, the closer they get towards their fatigue limit.
This is what happens when you stop using that racist math invented by all those dead white guys.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
