Author: Dr. David MalcolmPublication: Wind Harvest InternationalYear Published: 2023 This report brings together much of the structural and performance data from the operation of the Wind Harvester 3.1. The response at three of the sensors is examined in detail (the lower mast bending, lower mast torque, the bending in the middle of the upper blade,…
Author: Paul S. Veers, Herbert J. Sutherland, Thomas D. AshwillPublication: Sandia National Laboratories Wind turbines must withstand harsh environments that induce many stress cycles into their components. A numerical analysis package is used to illustrate the sobering variability in predicted fatigue life with relatively small changes in inputs. The variability of the input parameters is…
Author: Paul VeersPublication: Sandia National LaboratoriesYear Published: 1981 A cursory analysis of the stress history of wind turbine blades indicates that a single stress level at each wind speed does not adequately describe the blade stress history. A statistical description is required. Blade stress data collected from the DOE/ALCOA Low cost experimental turbines indicate that…
Author: Paul VeersPublication: Sandia National LaboratoriesYear Published: 1983 The fatigue life of wind turbine blades that are exposed to the random loading environment of atmospheric winds is described with random data analysis procedures. The incident wind speed and the stresses caused by these winds are expressed in terms of probability density functions, while the fatigue…
Author: Herbert J. Sutherland, Thomas D. Ashwill, Norman SlackPublication: Sandia National LaboratoriesYear Published: 1987 The LIFE computer code was originally written by Veers to analyze the fatigue life of a vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) blade. The basic assumptions built into this analysis tool are: the fatigue life of a blade component is independent of…
Author: David MalcolmPublication: Wind Energy SymposiumYear Published: 1990 The field stress data from two locations on the blade of the Indal 500 kW Darrieus rotor have been processed into histograms of fatigue stresses and grouped according to the atmospheric turbulence intensity. The aim was to determine the magnitude of the maximum cyclic stresses on the…
Author: Herbert J. Sutherland and Paul S. VeersPublication: Sandia National LaboratoriesYear Published: 1995 Modern wind turbines are fatigue critical machines used to produce electrical power. Economic viability requires them to have both low initial cost and long term reliability. The fatigue and reliability projects in Sandia’s Wind Energy Program are developing the analysis tools required…
Author: Herbert J. Sutherland and Paul S. VeersPublication: Wind EnergyYear Published: 1995 The fatigue analysis of a wind turbine component typically uses representative samples of cyclic loads to determine lifetime loads. In this paper, several techniques currently in use are compared to one another based on fatigue life analyses. The generalized Weibull fitting technique is…