Preliminary study on the applicability of semi-geodesic winding in the design and manufacturing of composite towers

During last twenty years, wind turbine manufacturers took the path of building larger machines to generate more electricity. However, the bigger the size became, the more material was required to support the loads, leading to great weight increases. Larger turbines and higher hub heights also resulted in larger tower base diameters which are limited considering their logistics. In many countries, the limit for transports with special permits maximizes the diameter to 4.5 metres. Considering this fact, the wind turbine market dominated by welded steel shell towers is looking for new structural solutions for their future turbines. Although, composite materials are not used as the structural material in the towers of today's turbines, the demand for larger wind turbines forces engineers to seek for alternative material systems with high specific strength and stiffness ratios to be used in towers. Inspired by the applicability of filament winding in tower production, in the present article we investigated the effect of semi-geodesic winding on the winding angle, thickness, stiffness coefficients and vibration characteristics of filament wound composite conical shells of revolution which simulate wind turbine towers at the structural level. Present study showed that the preset friction applied during semi-geodesic winding is an important design parameter which can be controlled to obtain gradually increasing thickness from tower top to the base of the tower, and favourably alter the dynamic characteristics of the composite towers