cee200: Structural & Geotechnical Engineering Seminar

UCLA Civil & Environmental Engineering Department

Engineering of a Shrouded Wind Turbine: Design Challenges and the Need for Multi-Disciplinary Collaboration

Omer O. Erbay

Senior Project Manager

Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc.

ooerbay@sgh.com    |    www.sgh.com

Wind turbines are complex machines designed to harvest energy from wind.  These machines constantly evolve and come in different forms to capture the wind energy as efficiently as possible.  Each new wind turbine concept, whether to be located at the top of a mountain, in the middle of an ocean, at the roof of a building, along the side of a bridge, or at the top of an electrical pole, requires collaborative effort of a multi-disciplinary group of people to overcome its design challenges.  Coordination of such a multi-disciplinary group also comes with its own challenges. This talk will present some of the structural design problems and lessons learned from engineering of a shrouded wind turbine.  The following topics will be covered:

• Calculation of representative set of design loads for unique design conditions
• Consideration of ease of fabrication in design to reduce manufacturing costs
• Incorporation of fatigue effects in the design process
• Optimization of shape and weight to achieve modular design

Where:       Haines Hall 220

When:        4 – 6 PM, Tuesday, May 15

Speaker: Dr. Erbay received his BS and MSCE degrees from Middle East Technic al University and doctoral degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and currently working as a Senior Project Manager at Simpson Gumpertz & Heger.  He is experienced in linear and nonlinear structural analysis of wide range of systems, including composite structures, towers, pipelines, liquid storage tanks, and pressure vessels.  He has strong background and understanding of structural dynamics, earthquake engineering, analysis and design of wind turbines, soil-structure-interaction and seismic analysis and design of nuclear structures and buried pipelines, collapse analysis, failure risk assessment, fragility calculation, probabilistic analysis, fatigue evaluation, finite element modeling with nonlinear and temperature-dependent materials.  He was one of the key engineers who performed the nonlinear structural collapse analysis of World Trade Center Towers 1 and 2 and World Trade Center Building 7 as part of the investigation by National Institute of Standards and Technology