This document outlines the design for the tower, foundation, and raising mechanism of a Hugh Piggott wind

turbine with 2.4 m diameter and a hinged tilt-up tower with 6 m height. Guy wires will be used to keep it standing and there will be four on each of the two levels. The wind turbine is planned to be built in Doddington, about 20 minutes outside Bristol.

The quality of wind improves with the height of the tower, but so does the experienced by it. forces The

optimum balance must be achieved between stability and wind speed. Our site has a 5.08 m/s mean wind speed at 6m. A 10 m tower was considered, but the increase in power generated does not compensate well the extra cost, effort, and difficulty of maintenance that it adds. A 6m steel pipe with 60.3 and 50.8 mm outer and inner diameter will be used for the tower.

Steel guy wires with 6.35 mm diameter will be used. These will absorb the bending moment taken by the tower. These wires would have a safety working load (SWL) of 400 kg, a proof load of 800 kg, and a breaking load of 2 tonnes. The image below shows you the lengths of the wires and their angles relative to the tower. 60 m of guy wires will be needed which also includes the wires for the raising system.

Lugs are what will be used to serve as an attachment point for the guy wires. The guy wire would be fitted on a thimble and hooked around the bar on the lug (which I coloured blue in the CAD image below); the wire is then attached with rope grips to secure. It has an M20 thread and fitted with a nut. It is not shown on the image, but a lock nut will also be used to prevent the nut from loosening due to the vibrations of turbine. I also ran a stress analysis on the component and was still above safety factor of 4 under a 10kN force in the expected direction of loading.
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A 0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 m3 reinforced concrete block will be used made similar to the one on the image above. There will be 20 mm diameter threaded bolt that will be embedded on it. The bolt is where the base plate of the hinge will be locked on to. The primary purpose of the foundation pad is to support the weight and prevent the tower from sinking in.
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A tri-axial hinge will be fabricated by welding cuts of cylinder tubes of appropriate diameter to fit the tower and gin pole pipes (which will be welded to it). The stress analysis below is for a 10 kN vertical load, which is way higher than weight of the wind turbine, but, yet, the results were above the necessary safety factor, which is good. Dimensions are available in the CAD assembly file.

There will be no need to make use of concrete. We can check a scrapyard and a suitable one should be there. The anchor will be attached to a thick galvanised steel chain and this anchor will be buried. The chain is attached to a D-shackle where the turnbuckles (for adjusting tension) will be attached. This is then connected to the guy ropes with thimble and rope grips on.

The A Wind Turbine Recipe Book has an excellent guideline on this. The site owner has a winch that we can use for raising the tower as well. The idea is to attach a guy wire to a winch and connect that to the gin pole. The gin pole is also connected to the tower with another guy wire at an angle. A sawhorse will also be made (or just improvise) which is where the tower will rest its upper part before raising it. This is to give space to the wind turbine once it is connected. The tower is tested by raising it with no load. Afterwards, the wind turbine is fitted and the tower is raised. If it all goes well, then. MISSION COMPLETE!

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