Floating Solar Lattice Structure for Low-Cost Maintenance Access
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing floating solar plants with modular designs face challenges in assembly and maintenance due to excessive sensitivity to rolling, pitching, and yawing, and require oversizing of floatability to accommodate maintenance personnel, leading to increased material costs and complexity in assembly and structural integrity under environmental forces like wind and swell.
Innovation Solution
A modular floating solar plant design featuring a lattice structure with a polygonal meshing of beams that extends along the horizontal plane, allowing for easy assembly from the bank without lifting means, and incorporating flexible ears for deformation under vertical loads to create waterways for maintenance, ensuring resistance to compressive and tensile forces while minimizing material usage.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If the floatability is oversized to accommodate maintenance personnel, then the plant can support maintenance operations, but the material cost increases
Solution Approach 1:
The plant is divided into modular floating units that can be independently assembled and configured. Each module has standardized dimensions and components, allowing the overall structure to be scaled efficiently without requiring excessive floatability in each individual unit. The segmentation enables maintenance personnel to work on individual modules rather than requiring the entire plant to be oversized for maintenance access.
Solution Approach 2:
Maintenance access is provided through waterways created by the spatial arrangement of modules rather than by oversizing individual floating units. The modules are positioned to create channels and pathways at the water level, allowing maintenance boats and personnel to access all parts of the plant without adding excess buoyancy capacity to each module.
2Stability of the object's composition
If the structure is mechanically linked above water to reduce sensitivity to rolling and pitching, then the structural stability improves, but the assembly complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The modules are pre-assembled on land with all mechanical linkages and structural connections established before being launched into water. This preliminary assembly ensures proper structural stability without requiring complex assembly operations in the water, as the modules arrive at the installation site already configured and stabilized.
Solution Approach 2:
The modules are designed to be assembled on flat, level ground during manufacturing, creating a stable structural baseline. When launched into water, the modules naturally float at the same water level, maintaining structural stability without requiring complex adjustment mechanisms or additional assembly complexity in the aquatic environment.
3Stability of the object's composition
If the structure works only in tension to limit sensitivity to rolling and pitching, then the structural response to environmental forces improves, but the assembly from bank without lifting means becomes difficult
Solution Approach 1:
The structure incorporates both tension and compression capabilities through its modular design. The floating modules can dynamically adjust their orientation and position in response to environmental forces, working in tension when pulled apart and in compression when pushed together. This dynamic behavior allows the structure to resist rolling and pitching while maintaining ease of assembly from the bank, as the modules can be simply pushed together to form the complete structure.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
The design enables rapid and efficient assembly and maintenance of the solar plant with reduced material costs, improved structural strength, and enhanced resistance to environmental forces, allowing for easy transportation and storage of modules due to their lightweight and compact nature.
Implementation Method 1
said structure of the network, resulting from the assembly of said structural modules, being configured so as to work along the two directions substantially of the horizontal plane of the structure while resisting the compressive forces and the tensile forces to which said structure of the network is subjected
Implementation Method 2
floating modules ensuring the floatability of the plant
Data Source
AI summary
A floating solar plant supporting photovoltaic panels, resulting from the assembly of structural modules and floating modules on a body of water, forming a network of floating support devices supporting photovoltaic panels. The network including at least: a first row of floating support devices supporting a first row of photovoltaic panels, a second row of floating support devices supporting a second row of photovoltaic panels, and wherein the first row of photovoltaic panels and the second row of photovoltaic panels are spaced apart according to the transverse direction, perpendicular to the longitudinal direction by structural modules, and wherein at least the structural modules ensuring the spacing between the first row of photovoltaic panels and the second row of photovoltaic panels are configured so as to be immersed, at least during the passage of a servicing unit.