Engineering Commons^™

Static Balancing Of The Cal Poly Wind Turbine Rotor, Derek Simon

Master's Theses

The balancing of a wind turbine rotor is a crucial step affecting the machine’s performance, reliability, and safety, as it directly impacts the dynamic loads on the entire structure.

A rotor can be balanced either statically or dynamically. A method of rotor balancing was developed that achieves both the simplicity of static balancing and the accuracy of dynamic balancing. This method is best suited, but not limited, to hollow composite blades of any size. The method starts by quantifying the mass and center of gravity of each blade. A dynamic calculation is performed to determine the theoretical shaking force on …

California Polytechnic State University Wind Resource Assessment, Jason Allan Smith

Master's Theses

Wind resource assessment at California Polytechnic State University shows there is potential for wind power generation on Cal Poly land. A computational fluid dynamics model based on wind data collected from a campus maintained meteorological tower on Escuela Ranch approximately 5 miles northwest of campus suggests there are areas of Cal Poly land with an IEC Class III wind resource at a height of 80 meters above ground. In addition during the daytime when the campus uses the most energy there are large portions of land with annual average daytime wind speeds above 6.9m/s. These areas have been identified by …