Iowa State Students Devise 35% Faster Turbine Production

October 1st, 2009 by Susan Kraemer

As the US finally moves into manufacturing our own clean energy, a new kind of engineering is starting to move to the forefront. Manufacturing processes engineering. Under the direction of associate professor Vinay Dayal; Iowa State U students are trying to find the way to make wind turbines roll off US assembly lines more efficiently. If we can work out cheap production processes here, we can build parts here.

The university is using a $6.3 million fund from the US Department of Energy, TPI, and and the Iowa Power Fund and has the assistance of scientists from Sandia National Labs and TPI, which operates a local turbine blade factory. Initially they are trying to see how they can boost the speed of the manufacturing process by increasing automation and by automating quality control.

They could improve the productivity of turbine blade factories by as much as 35%.

The researchers at Iowa State’s new Wind Energy Manufacturing Laboratory are using Dayal’s aerospace engineering expertize to develop new, cheap and efficient ways to manufacture turbines.

They are using miniature versions of the giant molds used to manufacture fiberglass turbine blades. Each blade can be 50 meters long and weigh up to 15,000 pounds, yet it must be built within millimeters of specifications.

Quality control is key. Blades must be able to withstand 20 years of harsh real world conditions and handle rotation speeds of up to 200 miles an hour at the tip. One way is to find a way to inspect the performance of parts accurately without taking them apart. Faster and better inspections improve factory efficiency.

Iowa State may be no MIT, but remember that Iowa is actually now the nation’s leader in the percentage of wind energy it supplies to the grid (Source) and research like this can bring clean energy manufacturing to local states. The closer that huge turbine production is to installation regions, the lower the carbon footprint.

This is an example of the variety of new regional jobs that will multiply once we pass energy legislation that puts a price on pollution with the Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act. As we start to build more clean energy here at home, aerospace engineering instructors and industrial manufacturing systems engineers can also use their skills to help birth the new green economy.

Image: Flikr user Jeannette Greaves

Source: Iowa State University News

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Tags: aerospace engineering, American clean energy, clean energy jobs, Clean Energy Jobs & American Power Act, industrial manufacturing systems engineers, Iowa State University, Iowa wind power leader, puts a price on pollution, Sandia National Labs, turbine blade factory, US Department of Energy funding, Wind Energy Manufacturing Laboratory

About the Author

Susan Kraemer writes at CleanTechnica, CSP-Today, PV-Insider , SmartGridUpdate, and GreenProphet. She has also been published at Ecoseed, NRDC OnEarth, MatterNetwork, Celsius, EnergyNow, and Scientific American. As a former serial entrepreneur in product design, Susan brings an innovator's perspective on inventing a carbon-constrained civilization: If necessity is the mother of invention, solving climate change is the mother of all necessities! As a lover of history and sci-fi, she enjoys chronicling the strange future we are creating in these interesting times. Follow Susan on Twitter @dotcommodity.

Uncle B

Isee planned obsolescence, shoddy workmanship, poor, low grade manufacturing processes,and the standard “American school of Engineers” follies afoot, Remember: Theses are the same assholes that took the mighty GM(America) and in their generation drove it to bankruptcy! I wouldn’t trust these incompetent “Foot Ball Stars” to sharpen a pencil! Fvck them! Go Chinese, Danish , Swedish, German, anything but the folks from the pis-poor failing American school system and the Bull Shiite they do! Imagine, a world recognized legend, GM( America) flat on its ass, workers going hungry, and building the “Volt” – already in Taxi service in Shanghai, and tested good under the BYD nameplate, still on the drawing boards in America, seeking government funding and far too heavy and cumbersome – a 1930’s sheet metal and hydraulics nightmare with foreign batteries due to our lack of expertise, vaporware that may never see pavement! These assholes are going to use the same equations to build our energy future? Doomed! I say! Doomed from the start!
Uncle B

Isee planned obsolescence, shoddy workmanship, poor, low grade manufacturing processes,and the standard “American school of Engineers” follies afoot, Remember: Theses are the same assholes that took the mighty GM(America) and in their generation drove it to bankruptcy! I wouldn’t trust these incompetent “Foot Ball Stars” to sharpen a pencil! Fvck them! Go Chinese, Danish , Swedish, German, anything but the folks from the pis-poor failing American school system and the Bull Shiite they do! Imagine, a world recognized legend, GM( America) flat on its ass, workers going hungry, and building the “Volt” – already in Taxi service in Shanghai, and tested good under the BYD nameplate, still on the drawing boards in America, seeking government funding and far too heavy and cumbersome – a 1930’s sheet metal and hydraulics nightmare with foreign batteries due to our lack of expertise, vaporware that may never see pavement! These assholes are going to use the same equations to build our energy future? Doomed! I say! Doomed from the start!