Small wind turbines as part of off-grid electric systems could provide benefit to remote rural communities in areas of the developing world that are yet to receive consistent and reliable electricity. Development in these areas can be difficult, primarily due to a lack of spending power and poorly developed infrastructure. Current designs for turbine support structures typically are produced from large, rolled steel tubes. These designs do not consider the economic or practical limitations of remote rural communities and produce structures that are largely unsuitable for these areas. By assessing the needs of these types of area, this work identified specific aspects of current wind turbine masts that must be improved on to allow for a design which accounts or the specific needs of remote rural areas in developing countries. Consideration of a wide range of design configurations, materials, and manufacture methods led to a proposed design for a natural material, Wrapped Tow Reinforced (WrapToR) truss wind turbine tower, which could be a feasible alternative to wind turbine towers specifically tailored to the needs of remote rural areas in developing countries. This design has an emphasis on low mass and low cost. In order to measure performance of the tower, it was modelled and analysed using matrix structural analysis. An optimisation algorithm was then used to produce a set of mass optimal configurations of the tower design that meet stated requirements based on existing wind turbine masts. The optimised results show significant performance improvement compared to existing designs. Future work could further develop the model to increase accuracy, through the inclusion of more design features and physical experimentation to verify the results of the model.
Truss-based Natural Material Wind Turbine Towers
Lillywhite, M. E. (Author). 3 Oct 2023
Student thesis: Master's Thesis › Master of Science by Research (MScR)