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Bennett Associates has been involved in Wind Power since the
company started in the early 1980s. The first projects undertaken tended to be
component based, checking individual systems within the turbine. The company has
recently completed its most ambitious project within the industry in the design
and analysis of a complete 1MW turbine.
The wind energy market is intensely competitive, so the product,
as shown in the photographs on this page, had to enter the market at the top, a
challenge for any newcomer to an industry. This was clear from the outset to the
project team which comprised Renewable Energy Systems (client) and Peter
Brotherhood (manufacturer) in addition to Bennett Associates. With this in mind,
novel analysis techniques were implemented (and in some cases developed) for the
application.
The design drivers for these turbines is fatigue, due to the
constant rotation of the mechanism, coupled with the turbulence of the wind
driving the system. Unlike other systems such as a crane, however, the direction
of loading is completely unpredictable. Where with a standard fatigue analysis
only one loading channel has to be considered, with the hub of the turbine,
eighteen simultaneous channels were incorporated. Bennett Associates took this
on board and developed bespoke software, running alongside the finite element
analysis, to validate the design against a twenty year simulated load time
history. This approach lead to weight savings of up to forty percent in some
components against standard method, greatly reducing the weight and cost of the
unit. Further advanced analysis was used in other areas of the design, including
composites for the Nacelle cover.
The turbine has since been sold by RES to Eastern
Electricity. It operates from a site in Northern Ireland, meeting the
electricity requirements for 625 homes in the local area. Work is now under way
to extend the capabilities of the unit even further, to produce more power with
minimal increase in unit cost.
For more information, contact us on
01709-373782
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M G Bennett and Associates Ltd is now part of the  Group |
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