Redesign of a wind turbine hub

The current designs of wind turbine hubs contain many faults. The slew ring bearing that connects the blade to the hub takes on a large bending moment that in many cases causes the joints to fail and the blade to break off. The design of the hub is very large, heavy, and expensive to machine. The objective of this research is to reappraise the existing design of wind turbine hub and to suggest an alternative design, which does not have the design faults that are currently found. Drawings and sketches are presented along with all necessary calculations for the current and new wind turbine hub. The proposed redesign of the hub will have a bearing pack that will distribute the load of the blade and a new hub which is lighter, less complex, and simple to machine. This new design will be much safer than the current design and will produce more reliable wind turbines.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2014

Author dc:creator

• Hunter-Jones, Bridget I

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Sanjay Sarma.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/92187

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/92187