Two-bladed turbine with ultra-flexible blades designed for UK manufacture.
Client: Carter Wind Turbines UK
Project Start: 1994
Project Delivery: 1995
Chris Hornzee-Jones was a Structural Design Engineer at Carter Wind Turbines UK at the time. He worked on the structural engineering of the ultra-flexible blades designed for the UK manufacture of this two-bladed turbine.
The more rigid the blades on a two bladed turbine are, the bigger the inertia retarding the rotor at the point of horizontal orientation becomes, causing the turbine to yaw unevenly. Therefore this turbine was designed with a teetering rotor and ultra-flexible blades that would bend downwind, relieving fatigue loads and extreme loads up to storm conditions. Pitch motion of the blade was achieved by elastic twisting of the spar.
The concept was ambitious in its size but the sophisticated design did not lend itself to easy maintenance. However, Carter tilt-down turbines such as this one outsold every other tilt-down concept in the market at the time. They were pioneers in the evolution of modern wind turbine rotors.
