Windmill flying apart

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By Gareth Branwyn
Posted 2008/03/14 @ 1:26 pm
Category Science

Ever wonder what it looks like when a windmill’s brakes fail? It’s NOT pretty (but it is pretty cool). The second vid shows it in dramatic slo-mo.

Windmill/turbine going wild and finally breaking – [Thanks, Patti!] Link

BY Gareth Branwyn

Gareth Branwyn is a freelancer writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture, including the first book about the web (Mosaic Quick Tour) and the Absolute Beginner's Guide to Building Robots. He is currently working on a best-of collection of his writing, called Borg Like Me.

In the Maker Shed

14 Responses to Windmill flying apart

Mr Dan on March 14th, 2008 at 4:57 pm said:

wow. now that is something you definately don’t want to make !

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zof on March 14th, 2008 at 5:51 pm said:

looks like the failure point was one of the blades, wonder if the blades were stronger if it could take the forces.

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gear head on March 14th, 2008 at 6:02 pm said:

I thought the blades were supposed to feather when the wind speed got above a certain point, that or the generator is supposed to switch to a mode which effectively retards and stops the fan assembly.

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gear head on March 14th, 2008 at 7:09 pm said:

apparently it was a runaway and they set up the camera knowing it was likely to self destruct. Pretty impressive.

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Phaedrus on March 14th, 2008 at 7:11 pm said:

As I understand it, this ‘mill was 20-30 years old, and did not have all of the modern safety and redundancies. The brakes failed, and it would have survived if not for the overspeed.

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jeremiah on March 14th, 2008 at 7:43 pm said:

couldn’t they just load it heavily, increasing the torque required to get it to a certain RPM? that’s how a lot of home-brew wind generators are made safe – short the generator. inverse electromagnetic currents are set up in the generator which basically act as a brake.

i’m guessing that the physical brake system failed, not an electromagnetic braking system.

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Dave Barak on March 14th, 2008 at 7:53 pm said:

Here’s a thought… I wonder if the blade tips went supersonic? That could possibly cause the disintegration, and it’s not outside the realm of possibility that they reached speeds like that.

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adrian on March 14th, 2008 at 9:28 pm said:

@ feathering blades
@ loading the genny

Feathering isn’t always controlled automatically. Often a base station sends a command for the turbine to yaw out of the wind. If communications had been severed from the weather station it wouldn’t receive that command.

overloading this generator could be as catastrophic as the blades disintegrating. Overloading would result in many hundreds of amps coursing through wire not designed for it…

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Noah Buddy on March 14th, 2008 at 9:59 pm said:

It seems many viewers (at other sites) see this as a reason not to build massive wind turbines. I think this shows just how much energy is available in the wind.

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The Snob on March 15th, 2008 at 11:05 am said:

@noah

No kidding. Ever been in the turbine hall of a steam plant? A truly awesome amount of kinetic energy going on there. Scary to think how far the parts would fly in the event of a catastrophic failure.

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Morten on March 15th, 2008 at 11:36 am said:

It was the safety system of the windmill that failed, which should have stopped it once the winds reached such speeds, and they knew it was going to happen.. (happened here in Denmark, where i live)
It was one of the neighbours that recorded it..

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soapy on March 16th, 2008 at 5:02 pm said:

If you shorted out the electrics, all that would happen is the gearbox would have sheared the teeth off, and then the blades would have had no resistance at all to slow them, thus ensuring that they frag.

A better way to deal with this is to steer the blades so they are not directly into the wind, so the felt windspeed is reduced.

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Michael on March 17th, 2008 at 1:01 pm said:

@noah

Just show them what happens when the brakes on a nuclear reactor fail

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Capissen on March 17th, 2008 at 9:03 pm said:

Just moved to the midwest recently and saw my first wind turbine…I had no clue that were that huge! And to see one fly apart…just incredible.

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