About
Most Important Project Objectives:
To design the wind turbine tower and the blades that are 150%~200% greater than a typical 80 m wind turbine model
Design/Result Expectations:
- The team must incorporate new ideas in their design, i.e., the tower cannot simply be a large steel tower and the blades cannot simply be large fiberglass blades. Such incremental improvements are not likely to resolve the cost issue.
- Examples of new ideas for the tower include steel-concrete composite and lattice-fabric. See Tindall Atlas, Nordex, Berger ABAM, Max Bogl, GRI, ATS (Advanced Tower Systems), Hormifuste, Enercone, Acciona-Inneo, FWS, 3G Energy, and GE (lattice-fabric tower).
- Although new ideas exist on manufacturing the large blade, such as mixing carbon fibers, the team should focus on ideas involving new structural/mechanical designs. An example of such an approach is the GE’s fabric-based blades.
Prototype Expectations:
- Obviously, we cannot create a full-scale prototype
- Identify key design features and their expected challenges upon construction
- Construct scaled prototypes to confirm that the construction will be viable
- The team does not have to construct everything, but may focus on only key features (ex: construct certain connection used within the tower and test it, rather than building the entire tower)
Estimated Costs of Hardware, or Items Provided by Sponsor
The budget is up to $2,000.