Wind power.

[bobbrakes]

Dear Mr. Sid,

I looked on the net and the Howden wind turbines at Altamont Pass still seem to be working OK.The reblading must have been a success! I know the original failures were caused by the studs arranged in a horseshoe configuration at the butt of the blade tearing out. These were tightened down to the hub using normal hydraulic stud pre-tensioning. They pulled out of the blade under centrifugal stress.

[Evil Sid]

so just a slight design flaw or maybe an underestimate in the stresses involved under load. no matter how well you design something there is always that little unforseen scenario that will throw a spanner in the works, sometimes deliberately.

 

mind you considering the number of wind turbines world wide there seem to be very few incidents of catastrophic failure.

 

alway interesting to find these things out coming from an engineering background finding out how things work was always a bit of a pasion of mine even as a kid as witnessed by the number of toy cars,clocks, radios, etc that usually ended up in bits on the floor if i could get my hands on a screwdriver.

[bobbrakes]

Talking to one of the engineers whilst on the blades he told me that design was deceptively simple. Forces on the blades varied not just with e.g.wind speed and gen load but as the blades rotated past the shadow of the tower. Nuclear fusion, that's the answer! The so called Hydrogen Bomb is a very green weapon with no fallout, (apart from the fission stage trigger.) Cold fusion would be a dream.