Seismic Design of Utility-Scale Wind Farm Towers in the Americas: a Comparison of Us, Mexican, and Chilean Code Requirements

Abstract eng:
With its beginnings in Europe, the commercial utility-scale wind industry has been evolving in North America for approximately thirty years, yet only recently have there been attempts to reconcile building code requirements with industry practices for the seismic design of the wind turbine support structures, the most predominant of which is the modern fabricated tubular tower. One such attempt was a joint effort of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) that resulted in the publication in 2011 of a tower design guideline titled “Recommended Practice for Compliance of Large Land-based Wind Turbine Support Structures,” also known as “ASCE/AWEA RP2011.” Although perhaps just a first step, RP2011 represented a milestone in the level of design maturity for wind towers and in the level of coordination with the US building code, i.e., the International Building Code (IBC) and ASCE 7. Now in recent years, utility-scale wind project development has expanded and continues to gain momentum in Central and South America. Based on experiences on these projects, there is a similar situation to the earlier days in the US wind industry where the local building codes are not specialized to address the idiosyncrasies of wind tower design either in general or specifically in seismic design. Considering the modern wind tower, this paper will compare and contrast US seismic design practices (based on ASCE/AWEA RP2011, the IBC, and ASCE 7) with those of Mexico (the CFE Manual de Diseño de Obras Civiles, Diseño por Sismo, MDOC-DS) and those of Chile (Norma Chilena NCh2369 and the Endesa ETG 1.015 Specification). The comparison intends to accomplish the following: introduce wind industry design practices; provide insight into the idiosyncratic issues of wind tower seismic design; show differences in how the modal response spectrum analysis (MRSA) procedure is applied; provide an overview of the seismic design challenges considered and addressed by ASCE/AWEA RP2011; and suggest how recommended practices and lessons learned from experiences in the US wind industry might be beneficially considered and coordinated with the Mexican and Chilean seismic design practices for wind towers.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket