Wind energy, one of the renewable energy sources, is widely used as one of the alternative energy sources. A wind turbine generally consists of elements such as tower, blades, rotor, gearbox, generator. One of the biggest parts of wind turbines is the tower part. The towers are manufactured in conical and tubular form and the tower dimensions are designed differently according to the electrical energy to be produced. With these aspects, stress and deformation analyzes of towers are important. In this numerical study, von mises stress and total deformation of tapered and tubular wind turbine towers with different lengths are analyzed. Numerical calculations for von mises stress and total deformation are carried out using finite element software ANSYS Workbench. The tapered and tubular towers in software are modelled under clamped-free boundary conditions. A force of 750 N is applied to the free end of the tower. As can be seen from the study, the increase in tower length increased the von mises stress and the total deformation. The increase of diameters of the cross-sections at the top of wind turbine towers causes a decreasing in won mises stress and total deformations. It has been found that the maximum affected areas of the towers, which are subjected to constant force on the total deformation, are the top areas of the towers. The von mises stress and deformations of tapered wind turbine towers are higher compared to tubular wind turbine towers.
Keywords: Wind tower, Von Mises stress, Deformation, Cross-section.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank Dr. Savas Evran (Canakkale Onzekiz Mart University, Turkey) for his generous support and encouragement during the preparation of this manuscript.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Wind tower, Von Mises stress, Deformation, Cross-section
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