Fragility analysis of steel and concrete wind turbine towers

Abstract

As the issues of global warming and a finite supply of fossil fuel based energy gain significance, the prospects and necessity for renewable energy concepts have become both socially and economically relevant. At the forefront of renewable energy development is the relatively mature concept of extracting electricity from the wind. Gaining prominence across the globe, wind turbines are striving to increase efficiency and extract greater amounts of energy from the available wind resources. The most recent state of the art developments see wind turbine capacities increasing to between 5 MW and 10 MW with the corresponding hub heights stretching beyond 100 m tall.