Section Design and Analysis of ICH RC Tower Supporting 5MW Wind Turbine

Abstract

The trend of wind turbine is enlargement of its capacity for reducing construction cost and increasing efficiency. This tendency causes needs of longer blades and bigger towers. A bigger steel tower has the higher risk of buckling failure so that it could not be safe enough. This study suggests an ICH RC (internally confined hollow reinforced concrete) wind power tower which has higher strength than current steel towers. Its section was designed and analyzed by using CoWiTA which is a nonlinear analyzing program from KIOST (Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology) [1]. Also, FAST from NREL (national renewable energy laboratory) was used for checking that wind energy system was operated normally with the ICH RC tower [2].Load information of 5MW reference steel towers was reviewed by literatures. Moment at bottom of the tower (transition piece), moment at top of the tower, and axial force from weight of turbine were surveyed as 159,000kN-m, 31,800kN-m, and 4,185kN respectively. In this study, bottom diameter (DB0) was set as 5.5m and top diameter of the tower was set as 3.9m which considered connection with nacelle part. The targeted tower height was 95m. Based on these specifications, each tower section was designed. In addition, not only smaller bottom diameters (100%, 90%, 80%, and 70% of DB0) than reference tower, but 4 cases of hollow ratio (90%, 85%, 80%, and 75%) were considered to find an optimal secto that it could not be safe enough. This study suggests an ICH RC (internally confined hollow reinforced concrete) wind power tower which has higher strength than current steel towers. Its section was designed and analyzed by using CoWiTA which is a nonlinear analyzing program from KIOST (Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology) [1]. Also, FAST from NREL (national renewable energy laboratory) was used for checking that wind energy system was operated normally with the ICH RC tower [2].Load information of 5MW reference steel towers was reviewed by literatures. Moment at bottom of the tower (transition piece), moment at top of the tower, and axial force from weight of turbine were surveyed as 159,000kN-m, 31,800kN-m, and 4,185kN respectively. In this study, bottom diameter (DB0) was set as 5.5m and top diameter of the tower was set as 3.9m which considered connection with nacelle part. The targeted tower height was 95m. Based on these specifications, each tower section was designed. In addition, not only smaller bottom diameters (100%, 90%, 80%, and 70% of DB0) than reference tower, but 4 cases of hollow ratio (90%, 85%, 80%, and 75%) were considered to find an optimal sect