Modular surface foundation for wind turbine space frame towers

Abstract

A modular surface foundation for wind turbine space frame towers, an apparatus to form panels of housing members of modular surface foundation, and method of forming the modular surface foundation for wind turbine space frame towers is provided. The modular surface foundation comprises a plurality of footing members, and a housing member disposed on each of the footing members, the housing members extending from the footing members and attaching to one or more structural members forming a portion of a wind turbine tower, wherein the housing member provides support and increased height for the space frame tower and includes an interior space.

Description

FIELD[0001]The present disclosure is directed to a modular surface foundation for wind turbine space frame towers, an apparatus to form a plurality of panels of the housing member of the modular surface foundation, and a method of forming the modular surface foundation for wind turbine space frame towers.BACKGROUND[0002]Recently, wind turbines have received increased attention as environmentally safe and relatively inexpensive alternative energy sources. With this growing interest, considerable efforts have been made to develop wind turbines that are reliable, efficient, and cost effective to install.[0003]Generally, a wind turbine includes a rotor having multiple blades. The rotor is mounted via a hub, main shaft and bearing to a housing or nacelle, which is positioned on top of a truss or tubular tower. Utility grade wind turbines (i.e., wind turbines designed to provide electrical power to a utility grid) can have large rotors (e.g., blade lengths of 30 meters or more). In additi...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0007]Another aspect of the present disclosure includes a method of forming a modular surface foundation for wind turbine space frame towers comprising fabricating a plurality of housing members having a series of post-tensioning cables, forming a plurality of shallow trenches to hold footing members, fabricating a plurality of footing members and placing the footing members in the shallow trenches, applying the plurality of housing members to the plurality of footing members and securing the housing members to the footing members, applying tension to housing members using the post-tensioning cables wherein the housing member provides support and increased height for the space frame tower and includes an interior space, and attaching structural members of wind turbine space frame tower to housing members.

[0009]One advantage of the present disclosure is that the modular surface foundation provides reduced excavation costs and requires less material to install compared to current space frame tower foundations.

[0011]Yet another advantage of the present disclosure is that the modular surface foundation provides additional height to the space frame tower.

Problems solved by technology

As power requirements increase, the size of wind turbine rotor blades increase which causes an increase in the overall size of the wind turbine, resulting in further increases in tower bottom load which also increases the foundation requirements.

The current foundation approaches for space frame towers suffer from various obvious draw-backs.

Although material requirements for the foundations for wind turbine space frame towers are substantially less than that of traditional single steel tube towers, the amount of concrete, rebar and other reinforcements is still costly.

Furthermore, because of the design of traditional wind turbine space frame towers, additional structures must be built on-site to house any necessary down tower equipment or components, because inadequate storage exists in traditional wind turbine space frame towers.

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