Tech Recently: Suspended Solar Panels See the Light – NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration – Inergency
[ad_1]
In the 80 years since the shocking collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington, engineers have designed suspended structures to minimize their universal weakness: resonance. If not designed to deal with oscillations caused by forces like wind, the frequency of these forces might cause tensions to build and inevitably break the structure.
When Jim Clair examined how to focus mirrors at a concentrated solar energy power plant, he thought about suspending the mirrors on cables but remembered the images of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge shaking itself apart. To determine how well these suspended solar panels might hold up to potentially destructive oscillations, Clair, and his company Skysun LLC in Cleveland, Ohio, sought the help of NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Glenn Research Center in 2016 to verify his design was safe from dangerous resonance.
Trevor Jones, a dynamicist at Glenn, went to nearby Lorain County Community College to work with a prototype of the system. Jones induced vibrations in the cables with hammers and took measurements of the resulting oscillations. Based on this data, Jones designed a program that can accurately model the design’s tensile strength against wind-induced oscillations at any scale. With the dimensions plugged in, the program did the math and proved that Clair’s idea might work without shaking apart.
Recently, Skysun builds various suspended solar energy generation systems, ranging from the hammock-like Skysun Solar Pollinator to full-sized solar pergolas that provide both electricity and shade.
Disasters Expo USA, is proud to be supported by Inergency for their next upcoming edition on March 6th & 7th 2024!
The leading event mitigating the world’s most costly disasters is returning to the Miami Beach
Convention Center and we want you to join us at the industry’s central platform for emergency management professionals.
engage with the industry’s leading professionals to better prepare, protect, prevent, respond
and recover from the disasters of today.
programs to accurately prepare for disasters. Featuring sessions from the likes of The Federal Emergency Management Agency,
NASA, The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NOAA, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, TSA and several more this event is certainly providing you with the knowledge
required to prepare, respond and recover to disasters.
With over 50 hours worth of unmissable content, exciting new features such as their Disaster
Resilience Roundtable, Emergency Response Live, an Immersive Hurricane Simulation and
much more over just two days, you are guaranteed to gain an all-encompassing insight into
the industry to tackle the challenges of disasters.
By uniting global disaster risk management experts, well experienced emergency
responders and the leading innovators from the world, the event is the hub of the solutions
that provide attendees with tools that they can use to protect the communities and mitigate
the damage from disasters.
Tickets for the event are $119, but we have been given the promo code: HUGI100 that will
[ad_2]