WELCOME HELP FROM SHEFFIELD UNIVERSITY

As the Hales Tidal Turbine Project works towards building the 1KW demonstration turbine planned for later this summer, problems arose in the construction of the four main turbine power blades.

To be able to make these blades which for this turbine are approx one metre high and half a metre wide, it would require some clever design and engineering to produce a blade that is both strong enough to survive the high work loads expected and also be light enough to be at least semi-bouyant if not buoyant.

Davrek Engineering Ltd of Eastbourne designed and made some light weight steel armatures to transmit the power blade load to the Turbine main discs but the Hales Energy Group making this turbine, were having trouble forming a suitable skin for the blade.

Possibly the very cold, damp weather this spring did not help with our efforts top form a clean rolled fold in the 3mm ABS plastic sheets planned for this application.

After several attempts and failures and the waste of expensive material, it was decided a less perfect option was to form the plastic turbine power blade skins in sections with a great deal of adhesive and plenty of shaping etc.

As an alternative option it was also planned to possibly make a plug and former and then make the blade skin from fibreglass.

Failing all that, Davrek Engineering Ltd offered to form a thin alumimum skin for us.

Then out of the blue, The University of Sheffield’s Department of Engineering Materials came to the rescue with an offer to make a set of turbine power blades from the carbon fibre materials that they specialise in.

Dr Tim Swait, a Research Associate at the Engineering Materials Department along with Dr Simon Hayes, a lecturer at the same department were kind enough to give Paul Hales, the Director of the Hales Energy Group a tour of the facility and spend time explaining the properties of carbon fibre composites and the best ways to construct a set of power blades.

Their combine knowledge and insight into the uses of these high performance materials and other forms of composite will help the project greatly as the sizes, profiles and manufacturing requirements become known.

Hopefully the results of the Hales Tidal Turbine with the Sheffield-Power Blades will also produce material information from the trials for the department to widen the application of their materials into this renewable area.