Scanning for ideas: Damper steadies wind turbines
A company building relatively low-cost, steel-tube towers for wind turbines was able to lower the price of construction by 30%, but was having difficulty with large, transient wind loads shaking the structure.
This can throw the propeller,
bearings, turbine, or other drivetrain
components out of alignment, then they
wear and fail prematurely. To stiffen the
tower without adding much weight, the
company called on Lord Corp., Cary, N.C.
(lord.com), to adapt one of its Fluidastic
dampers.
The damper can bleed off more than
50% of 300,000-lb loads, despite short
strokes. It provides bidirectional damping
at frequencies from 0.25 to 0.45 Hz, the
band that caused resonant vibrations
in the tower. The dampers should last
20 years without maintenance.
Circle 402