Development of a Low Power Wind Turbine for Extreme Weather
A treaty of 1959 made the Antarctica the continent of peace and science.It is the cleanest continent in the world,but also the most inhospitable,especially the area where our country,Argentina,has focused its activities.The surface of the Antarctica is about 14 million km2,which is covered by ice of about 2 km deep.Besides being the coldest continent,the Antarctica is also the driest,windiest,and highest in the world.Antarctic temperatures often drop to minus 40°C with gusts of 60 meters per second; the roughness of its complex terrain varies continuously,creating a random field of wind speeds.Beneath the surface,there is a clay layer known as active layer,since its properties vary throughout the year: viscous in summer,and almost impenetrable in winter.The active layer ’s depth varies with temperature.Below the active layer,the permanent frozen soil is found,known as permafrost,which makes excavations difficult for any type of installation,especially for high towers.For such inconveniences,a research is being carried out for the development of wind turbines which can operate under such conditions of cold and wind,with shallow foundations,but also which can be able to withstand long periods without maintenance,since they are usually placed in locations of difficult access due to lack of roads or cold extreme.The proposed solution to meet these drawbacks is to produce to the aerodynamics of the wind turbine an efficiency loss for the purpose of extracting only a small portion of the energy contained in a gust,by varying the geometry of the sweep of the blades,i.e.,to reduce the area swept by the blades,which inevitably will reduce the energy absorbed by wind turbine.In other words,a conventional generator has a flat or semi-flat sweep,while the proposal is a conical sweep with a variable angle of blades with respect to the direction of the air stream.This will protect the turbine,but also can reduce the mechanical stress on the tower and foundations when a gust occurs.To achieve this concept,a downwind type wind turbine has been developed,which has the capacity to tilt its blades in direction of the air flow,presenting a swept frontal area four times lower than with moderate winds.This allows the extraction of only a small fraction of the kinetic energy in a gust.
Antartica Complex terrain Permafrost Gusts
Eduardo Martins Do Vale Ricardo Bolzi
Argentine Air Force-Direction of Research and Development,Buenos Aires 1104 Argentine Air Force-Argentine Wind Energy Association,Buenos Aires 1104
国内会议
上海
英文
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2014-04-08（万方平台首次上网日期，不代表论文的发表时间）