WO2011075917A1 - Wind generator tower - Google Patents

Abstract

A composite material wind generator tower (11) is provided. The tower (11) partly utilizes natural fiber strip/panel material. The material has excellent properties of extension/compression elastic modulus, intensity and the like, so that the tower has advantages of light weight convenient for transport, good anticorrosion performance and recovery easiness relative to the conventional ones.

Description

 Tower for wind turbines

Technical field:

 The invention relates to a wind power generator tower and a manufacturing method thereof, in particular to a novel composite wind power generator tower mainly composed of strip/plate materials and a manufacturing method thereof.

Background technique:

 Wind turbines are mainly composed of wind wheels, transmission machinery, generators, controllers, machine grabs, towers

The bottom diameter is slightly larger than the top diameter; the outer casing is made of steel or reinforced concrete to provide sufficient strength and rigidity; the outer wall of the tower is coated with anti-corrosive paint; the inside of the tower has a ladder or elevator leading to the top of the tower for easy inspection and maintenance. The towers of megawatt wind turbines are usually over 60 meters, and some are up to hundreds of meters. For ease of transport, the tower can be manufactured in sections and assembled on site at the wind farm.

 With the improvement of wind energy technology and the improvement of the demand for clean energy, the power of wind turbines is increasing, the height of the tower is increased, the load strength is increased, and the weight of the tower is increased. At the same time, wind turbines can be installed not only on land, but also more and more wind farms gradually expand to the sea. The increased power of the unit and the requirements for offshore installations have caused problems such as heavy weight, difficult transportation, difficult lifting, high anti-corrosion requirements and high prices.

 Modern composite products, such as high-strength FRP, have better specific strength and specific modulus than steel in a single vector direction, so they can be used to reduce product weight under the same load on products with relatively concentrated forces. , which in turn reduces the difficulty of transportation and lifting. At the same time, composites generally have better corrosion resistance and do not corrode like metals due to high salt content in seawater. However, due to the use of chemical products as raw materials, the disadvantage of the tower made of composite materials is that the price is high and it is difficult to recycle after the service life is completed.

Summary of the invention:

It is an object of the present invention to provide a new tower design that is altered in structure and materials. Leather, the wind turbine tower has the characteristics of high strength, high modulus, low weight, easy transportation and installation, good corrosion resistance, and low cost and easy recycling of traditional towers.

 In order to achieve the above object, the present invention relates to a tower for a wind power generator, characterized in that the tower has a total length of at least 1/3 of its length and at least one layer in its cross-sectional housing. The material consists of a plurality of natural fiber materials pre-processed strip/plate fiber composite materials arranged in a shell in a certain order.

 Furthermore, in order to achieve the above object, the present invention relates to a tower for a wind power generator, characterized in that the tower has a total length of at least 1/3 of its length, in a housing of its cross section, at least A layer of material consists of a plurality of pre-machined natural fiber strips/sheet materials arranged in a sequence in the housing.

The main structural materials, while applying innovative structural design and materials to its main stress areas, to reduce costs and improve recyclability.

 The "mainly stressed part" referred to in the preceding paragraph refers to the part of the tower that is not less than 1 / 3 of the total height of the tower, usually more than half, and the structure and materials will be used within the tower height range of about 60-90%. .

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS:

 All of the above features can be better understood by the following description of the drawings with reference to the accompanying drawings in which: FIG. Overall view

 Figure 2 is a cross-sectional view of a cross section A of Figure 1;

 Figure 3 is a schematic view of the inner tube of the tower manufacturing process;

 Figure 4 is a schematic view of the winding process of the tower;

Figure 5 is a schematic view of a vacuum infusion process for making a tower; Figure 6 is a flow chart of the tower winding process;

 Figure 7 is a flow chart of vacuum casting process for tower fabrication

detailed description:

 The present invention relates to a tower for a wind power generator, such a wind generator as shown in FIG. The wind turbine blade 11 and the tower 12 of the wind power generator are shown in FIG. The tower 12 is characterized in that the total length of the tower 12 is at least 1/3 of the length, as shown in Fig. 2, in the housing of its cross section, at least one layer of material consists of a plurality of pre-machined strips/plates. The materials are arranged in a housing in a certain order.

 In conventional composite products, the material to be stressed is a fiber material, such as glass fiber, carbon fiber, wood fiber, flax fiber, and the like. The fiber material is formed into a cloth, and then the hand-paste or vacuum resin introduction technique is used to stabilize the fiber strength and shape the product. Another common method is to use a winding process to directly form the fibers in a regular arrangement. The present invention introduces a strip/plate composite material, which is generally elongated and has a rectangular cross section that is easily machined to enhance the strength of the same vector direction to withstand the main load on the tower.

 As shown in FIG. 2, the strip/plate material can be arranged side by side, and the contact surface is nearly perpendicular to the outer peripheral cut surface of the tower, so that the strip/plate material can share the load in the same direction, and become the strip/sheet layer 22 in the figure. . The other two layers of the tower structure are the FRP layers 21 and 23 in Figure 2.

 The strip/plate material may have a rectangular or trapezoidal cross section, and the short side extends in the outer circumferential direction of the tower, and the long side is perpendicular to the outer peripheral section of the tower. This structure provides a certain wall thickness to the tower to improve strength and rigidity. At the same time, it ensures that the strip/plate material is closely arranged and the outer circumference is still close to a circular shape, which is convenient for processing.

 An advantage of the invention is that at least a portion of the strip/sheet material is made of a composite material composed of hollow tubular fibers or made of a natural fiber material, thereby enabling the use of less material while maintaining the same structural strength. Lower product weight.

A strip/plate material is used as the main structural material at the main force receiving portion of the tower. The strip/plate material itself is still a composite material, and environmentally friendly bamboo and wood materials can be given priority, by material selection, drying, Hot pressing, grinding and other processes are made into plywood, laminated timber or composite materials. These bamboo and wood processing technologies have been widely used in various civil and industrial industries. High-strength bamboo composites or wood composites or bamboo-wood composites have higher specific strength and specific modulus than FRP, and the process is simple, and has good recyclability and recyclability. Therefore, it is a composite tower. The preferred material for the rack.

 A major feature of composite materials is the ability to withstand loads in all directions, which is especially suitable for products with concentrated loads in a vector direction, such as towers. In order to ensure that the tower wall can withstand the load acting on the tower by the wind power generator set, at least part of the strip/plate material should be concentrated in the same direction or approximately the same direction, which is the length direction of the tower. When the wind turbine is tilted by the wind to cause the tower to tilt toward the leeward direction, the windward casing of the tower is subjected to tension, and the leeward shell is subjected to pressure. The fiber material in the strip/plate material of the present invention is mainly used for bearing the tower. Tensile and compressive loads of the shell. According to structural calculations and process tests, the content of bamboo fiber composites is reasonable in the range of 40%-90%, especially in the range of 50%-80%.

 Bamboo and wood materials generally have good adhesion to common adhesives and are therefore easily compounded with other composite materials. The processing of the tower housing can be carried out by a vacuum introduction resin process or a winding process.

 The performance of bamboo and wood materials is unstable, but the selected and dried bamboo and wood materials can have stable mechanical properties. The change of water content is the main reason why bamboo and wood materials are difficult to be used in outdoor industrial structural materials. By using water-insulating resin materials such as epoxy resin to protect bamboo and wood materials, the tower can be guaranteed for 20 years. Stable mechanical properties in the above operating life. This has been well established in the wind turbine blade industry.

For the purpose of protecting the moisture content of the bamboo and wood materials, a layer of composite material is used as a protective layer, and is wrapped in a resin/rolling process by a vacuum in a resin or a winding process to coat the inner and outer layers of the strip/sheet material composed of the bamboo-wood composite material. The inner and outer composite materials have been used to bear the shear load and water content protection. The strip/plate material composed of the intermediate bamboo and wood composite material bears the tensile strength and the complementary composite structure tower housing. The design of the tower also includes its internal ladder or elevator to facilitate technicians to access the tower top machine for internal inspection and maintenance. There is a small door at the bottom of the tower for personnel to enter and exit. The outer surface of the tower is painted with paint, usually in the same color as the machine grab and the blades.

 The manufacturing process is as follows:

 1. Winding method, the process flow is shown in Figure 6:

 1. In S11, the inner tube shown in Fig. 3 is manufactured according to the inner diameter of the tower (in Fig. 4, the inner tube is indicated by reference numeral 41), the material is made of steel, and other surface conditions are good. Rigid material;

 I I. In S12, according to the ordinary winding process of FRP, a layer of FRP material is wound on the outside of the inner tube in the correct fiber direction to form a FRP layer 42 as shown in FIG. 4;

 II I. In S13, the plate/strip and the metal connection for the inter-section connection are placed on the periphery of the wrapped FRP, and bonded with a resin to form a plate/strip as shown in FIG. Layer 43;

 IV. In S14, the winding process is again used to wind a layer of FRP material on the outside of the plate/strip to form a FRP layer 44 as shown in FIG. 4;

 V. The S15 step is carried out by the S15 fully cured product, and the inner tube is removed and trimmed to the product shown in Fig. 2.

 2. Vacuum infusion method, the process flow is shown in Figure 7:

 I. In S21, the inner tube shown in Fig. 3 is made according to the inner diameter of the tower. The material is made of steel, and other rigid materials with good surface condition can also be used.

 I I. In S22, as shown in Fig. 5, the glass fiber cloth 53 , the plate / strip 54 and another layer of fiberglass cloth 55 are sequentially fastened to the inner tube 52;

 I I I. In S23, as shown in Figure 5, connect the inlet and outlet hoses 51 and 56;

 IV. In S24, these materials are vacuum infused using FRP vacuum infusion molding;

V. The S25 fully cured product is subjected to the step S26 to take out the inner tube, and repair The whole product becomes the product shown in Figure 2.

 A novel composite wind turbine tower and method of manufacturing the same according to the present invention comprises a unique tower housing structure designed thereby and a special material used therein. The tower part of the invention adopts a natural fiber strip/plate material, and the material has been tested and proved to have excellent tensile modulus, compressive modulus and strength, so that it has a weight relative to a conventional tower. Light and easy to transport, good anti-corrosion performance, easy to recycle and so on.

 Although the invention has been described with reference to the exemplary embodiments, it is understood that the invention is not limited to the exemplary embodiments disclosed. The scope of the following claims is to be accorded

Claims

Rights request A tower for a wind power generator, characterized in that the tower has a total length of at least 1 / 3 of its length, and in the housing of its cross section, at least one layer of material is pre-processed by a plurality of A good strip/plate material is arranged in a housing in a certain order.  2. The tower for a wind power generator according to claim 1, wherein the pre-processed strip/plate material is arranged side by side, the contact surface between adjacent strip/plate materials and the The outer surface of the layer material is nearly vertical.  3. A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 1 wherein at least a portion of the strip/plate is perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of the tower in a rectangular or trapezoidal shape and at least partially strip/plate shaped The short side of the cross section of the material is along the outer circumferential direction of the cross section of the tower, and/or at least a portion of the strip/sheet material has a rectangular cross section long side or a trapezoidal cross section oblique side perpendicular to the outer circumferential direction of the tower.  4. A tower for a wind power generator according to claims 1-3, characterized in that at least part of the pre-machined strip/sheet material is composed of a composite material.  5. A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 4, wherein at least a portion of the pre-machined strip/sheet material is comprised of a composite of hollow tubular fibers.  6. A tower for a wind power generator according to claims 1-3, characterized in that at least part of the pre-machined strip/plate material is composed of a natural fibre material.  7. A tower for a wind power generator, characterized in that the tower has a total length of at least 1 / 3 of its length, and in its cross-sectional housing, at least one layer of material consists of a plurality of natural fibers The pre-processed strip/plate fiber composite material is arranged in a shell in a certain order.  8. A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 6 or claim 7 wherein the main fiber direction of the fiber composite is substantially parallel to the length direction of the tower. 9. A tower for a wind power generator according to claims 7-8, characterized in that The composite fiber has a fiber content ratio of 50% to 90%.  10. A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 9, wherein the fiber composite has a fiber content ratio of from 60% to 80%.  A tower for a wind power generator according to any of claims 7-8, wherein the fiber composite material has a bamboo wood fiber content ratio of 40% to 90%.  The tower for a wind power generator according to claim 11, wherein the fiber composite material has a bamboo wood fiber content ratio of 50% to 80%.  A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 6 or 7, wherein the natural fiber material is a laminated material or a composite material.  14. A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 13 wherein the natural fiber material is reinforced by a resin cured by natural fibers.  15. A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 13 or claim 14, wherein at least a portion of the composite material layer is in a certain order from natural fiber strip/sheet material and fiber composite strip/sheet material. Extending the outer shell composition.  The tower for a wind power generator according to any one of claims 7 to 15, wherein the fiber composite material layer is composed of at least one outer layer of fiber composite material shell layer and at least one layer Surrounded by a layer of fiber composite shell.  17. A tower for a wind power generator according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the load bearing fibrous material is present in either or both of the inner and outer casing layers. In the inner outer shell layer.  18. A tower for a wind power generator according to any of the preceding claims, wherein the interior space is provided with stairs or an elevator.  19. A tower for a wind power generator according to claim 18, wherein a door is opened at the bottom of the tower.  A tower for a wind power generator according to any of the preceding claims 1 to 19, wherein the surface of said at least 1/3 of said tower is covered by lacquer.