Giant Wind Turbines

Currents in Upper Air Form Unfailing Source of Power for “Windmills” of Future

WIND, at the surface of the earth, is proverbially uncertain; but recent researches show that, a thousand feet or more above the ground, wind is comparatively steady and unfailing. This has given new life to the hope of finding a substantial source of natural power, even more universally available than water power; and the designs illustrated here have been prepared by a German engineer, Honnef, the erector of several huge radio towers. As shown here, the structure carrying the power plant would be higher than any other building man has yet been able to erect.

The surveys which have been made in Germany show that, with little variation, wind velocities of 22 miles an hour are quite constant at the height illustrated. To utilize this most effectively, instead of small wheels, it is proposed to erect on each wind-turbine tower three power wheels, each 530 feet in diameter. The whole weight is so counterbalanced on bearings that it faces the wind; while the angle at which the wheels encounter the air currents is depending upon the velocity of the wind. If this is very high, as in a storm, they present their edges only; if the currents of air are light, the wheels take a vertical position, as illustrated in the detail at the lower right of our illustration. The wheel will begin to rotate in a breeze of but 4 miles an hour and, because of its great inertia, will turn steadily.

The method of generating the power is unique. Instead of gearing the great wheels to a generator, as in previous construction, each wheel is itself made the rotor of a great electrical generator. The rings are double; the armature and field coils are built into the outer and inner rings, respectively; and the output is fed into a distributing system, which has the necessary transformers and converters. The inventor plans 40,000-volt direct-current transmission lines. The cost of each 30,000-horsepower unit is estimated at $1,100,000; delivering 130,000,000 kilowatt hours a year with slight cost for maintenance.

The first experimental tower to be erected is to be 665 feet high, with 200-foot turbine wheels, and located near Berlin." From Everyday Science and Mechanics, June 1932

alternative

Alternative type of mesh but another view from the northern part of the street. Don't like them as much.

Site

Site

The proposed site is the space between the buildings that occupy number 150 and 137 St Georges Terrace, Perth, Western Australia. Number 150 is, at the moment, relatively low level and a small tower is proposed for this site to control the energy requirements of the power created and to provide structure for one side of the wind turbine. the other side will be held up by the building on 150 St Georges Terrace. The wind turbine will be situated to maxamise the wind tunnel effect the larger buildings along the terrace create. Perth is generally a very windy city all year round. Further more it will provide aesthetic stimulation for the busy commercial street.

This post involves two images that represent the street view of the proposal and also a birds eye view.

Reflection....

I think at this stage in the assignment it is important to reflect on where I was going with my research and where I am now. The following is my original research proposal and after reading it, it is quite different to where i am at the moment. While a couple of issues are still relevant such as the influence of nature on design and the design process often being associated with the computer. These issues are the important ones I will continue to develop from now on. The fact that i have almost switched the role of nature around is rather irrelevant but wonderful at the same time and can be seen as a progression. Where as before I was thinking of making something rather artistic and structural to mimic the aesthetics of natural occurring structures and now I'm exploring the effects nature (wind) has on structure and how the computer can create this structure (horizontal Wind turbine)

Note: the images associated were from the original proposal

Architecture, Nature, Computer

Introduction

Nature is rife throughout architecture. We use natural resources to produce our homes, we design buildings to frame nature or maximise the potential of nature both in terms of sustainability and leisure and we often mimic nature both structurally, formally and conceptually. The influence of nature on building design can range from simply framing a beautiful tree in a carefully situated window to exploring, in a canopy-like roof the structural mathematic algorithms in the structure of a dragonfly’s wing composition. It is this mimicking or influential ability of structures in nature to facilitate design that is of particular interest. While the influence of the natural world has been seen in architecture for many years, since the dawn of the computer and the constant progression of generating tools the inspiration of nature is also progressing exponentially. It is ironic that such progressive tools continue to produce models and concepts that mimic the natural environment.

One explanation is discussed by the Biomimicry Institute:

“Biomimicry (from bios, meaning life, and mimesis, meaning to imitate) is a new discipline that studies nature's best ideas and then imitates these designs and processes to solve human problems. Studying a leaf to invent a better solar cell is an example. Think of it as "innovation inspired by nature."

The core idea is that nature, imaginative by necessity, has already solved many of the problems we are grappling with. Animals, plants, and microbes are the consummate engineers.”[1]

It is the idea of utilising the precedent of nature and the analytical power of the computer to create form that will be explored further.

Historical Context

The influence of nature and architecture can be traced back to times when Egyptian and Ancient Greek civilizations studied natural forms and the human body and abstracted them as geometry. Fundamental discoveries included geometric relationships such as the Golden Section, generator of the logarithmic spiral, a basic curve of life and growth[2]. Later the Gothic era produced buildings with both Greek geometry and pagan influence. The purpose of proportion and decoration with plant forms were also prominent. Further along, the forms and processes of nature inspired Ruskin, Pugin and Viollet-le-Duc which resulted in a hierarchy of form and function, truth to materials, rich polychromy and ornament. Art Nouveau saw the use of “long, curved, asymmetrical lines somewhat reminiscent of Celtic art. Inspired by the delicacy of such living forms as sinuous vine tendrils, flower stems, buds, and insect wings, the line could be gentle and graceful or powerful and tense like a whiplash. In architecture, ornament and structure became fused into a free-flowing, plastic, organic unity. Structures resembled sinuous vegetative growths, windows appeared as diaphanous membranes.”[3] While the Bauhaus re-appeared with right angles and straight lines as a theme, Antoni Gaudi took the organic to new levels. “He designed "equilibrated" structures (that stand like a tree, needing no internal bracing or external buttressing) with catenary, hyperbolic, and parabolic arches and vaults, and inclined columns and helicoidal (spiral cone) piers, first cleverly predicting complex structural forces via string models hung with weights (his results now confirmed by computer analysis).”[4] The dawn of the computer produced the ability to explore endless geometric forms, shapes and ideas that could be transformed into the built environment. The computer also provided the tool to measure and analyse in detail the natural occurring structures and their properties in terms of engineering similar structures for human use. However, there is a conflict that these computer programs provide a certain detachment from the appropriate process of design and the way a site should be treated to hold an architectural form. “The intellectual attraction of new science and the purity of geometric forms, made even more dazzling via three-dimensional modelling, are stimulating their use for their own sake. They are being applied as design imposed from the outside rather than organic design created, like life and nature, from within. Even fractal geometry, a deeper representation of natural relationships, is being applied externally, divorced from the internal functions of the building”.

Relevant Projects

While there has been a plethora of projects that explore the ideas in nature and how they can be utilised to advance science, technology and the human condition there are a number that are more specific to architecture and design.

1. The first project is influenced by trees and the way they distribute, evenly, mechanical tension throughout their mass. In doing so they minimise material while maximising strength. The Biomimicry Institute states “to distribute stress uniformly, trees add wood to points of greatest mechanical load, while bones go a step further, removing material where it is not needed, lightweighting their structure for their dynamic workloads. At the scale of the cell, trees arrange fibers in the direction of the flow of force, or principal stress trajectories, to minimize shear stress”. From these observations computer programs have been created to minimize material use and maximize strength. The Bionic Car by car manufacturer Daimler AG used CAO (computer-aided optimization) and SKO (soft kill option) to reduce the weight by 30% yet as crash safe as the conventional equivalent.

2. Peter Eisenman’s City of Culture of Galicia (CCG) uses the metaphoric connotations of nature to create his organic form of a ruptured yet highly designed landscape. The influence on the work is the form of the clam shell, plate tectonics and site contours.

3. The Serpentine Pavilion 2002 by Toyo Ito (Hyde Park, London) while not overly relevant in terms of its natural aesthetic or influence of nature, is interesting in the way geometry is manipulated to create a certain aesthetic and form. The façade and form are created by oscillating a square around a certain point – see opposing images.

The Project

The research will be explored on two scales: the small and large. Firstly a human scale assemblage/installation will be designed to inhabit a site on campus. This experiment will deal with factors such as light and materiality and the underlying concept of structure; minimum structure for maximum strength and the exploration of various natural occurring geometries. On a larger scale the architectural competition ‘Lavender Lake’ will be used to showcase the ability of natural compositions to create roof structures. This roof structure will be based on the findings of the first scale i.e. the most structurally sound to material usage ratio. In both cases a natural fibre, skeletal structure or interesting natural occurrence will be extrapolated with the computer to generate a form based around the ideas of biomimicry.

The Computer and Process

To produce the structures proposed a series of computer programs will be used including Rhinocerous 4.0, Multiframe and 3ds Max. Multiframe may be used to test the various structural merits of a number of natural occurring patterns such as the hexagon, triangle or bubble shape. Of course the research and development stage will also require sketches, models and various idea representation processes to fully explore these ideas. Postproduction of images or animation may also require software such as iMovie and Photoshop.

It will also be appropriate to research the CAO (computer-aided optimization) and SKO (soft kill option) software and see if it is appropriate to use for the architectural design process. FEM (Finite Element Model) will also be explored due to its use in engineering projects.

Conclusion

This research project will look to find the integration between architevture, the natural world and the computer. The computer is a fantastic tool however it needs the right input to maxamise its potential: what better input then the trials, failures and successes of nature and it’s components, they, after all, have evolved to survive. “They [the natural world] have found what works, what is appropriate, and most important, what lasts here on Earth. This is the real news of biomimicry: After 3.8 billion years of research and development, failures are fossils, and what surrounds us is the secret to survival.”[5]

References

Bahamon, A. Inspired by Nature: Plants: The Building/Botany Connection

Bejan, A. Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature

Braungart, M. McDonough, W. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, North Point Press, 2007 http://www.mcdonough.com/

Design Boom, ‘Biomimicry’ http://www.designboom.com/contemporary/biomimicry.html, accessed 16/8/09

Ellingsen, E. The Scientist, 'Designing Buildings, using Biology' http://www.thescientist.com/templates/trackable/display/news.jsp?type=news&o_url=news/display/53443&id=53443, 27th July 2007

Giralt-Miracle, D. ‘Gaudi: Nature in Architecture’ http://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/4/agiralt.pdf

http://www.asknature.org/#, ‘Lightweighting: Scots Pine’

http://www.biomimicrynews.com/research/Crustacean_shell_with_polyester_creates_mixed-

http://www.homedesignfind.com/architecture/mimicking-nature-australian-modern-leaf-house-stuns-with-its-design/ Under-Current Architects, Sydney Studio, 2009

http://www.naturaledgeproject.net/TNEPKeynoteSeries-JanineBenyus.aspx

http://www.0lll.com/lud/pages/architecture/archgallery/ito_serpentine/index.htm, Serpentine 2002 gallery images.

http://scientress.blogspot.com/2007/07/architecture-mimicking-nature-and-gaia.html

Mattheck, Claus. 1998. Design in nature: learning from trees. Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 276 p.

Pearson, D. New Organic Architecture: The Breaking Wave, November 2001

Pullin, John. 1998. Talking to the trees. Professional Engineering.

The Biomimicry Institute, ‘What is Biomimicry?’, http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/

Ulrich Schneider, Hayakeyama Sakamao, Manfred Speikl, Toyo Ito Toyo Ito: Blurring Architecture 1971-2005

‘When Science Meets Architecture, Strange Things Happen.’ The Scientist, 1988

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[1] The Biomimicry Institute, ‘What is Biomimicry?’, http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/

[2] Pearson, D. New Organic Architecture: The Breaking Wave, November 2001

[3] Pearson, D. New Organic Architecture: The Breaking Wave, November 2001

[4] Pearson, D. New Organic Architecture: The Breaking Wave, November 2001

[5] The Biomimicry Institute, ‘What is Biomimicry?’, http://www.biomimicryinstitute.org/