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They were threatened again in 2002 by a failure in the pitch cylinders in all sold mill in Germany. They have to be replaced, and it was an operation, that would take more than a working day. A mobile crane with a sufficient capacity was so expensive that it would have been a dead end for the company.
This time it was difficult. We had to put people in the air in front of the rotor to be able to replace the cylinders.
With an open utility hole, they have to build a small service crane up in the air. After that, a fitter needs to climb out there to operate it and begin to erect the main crane with a capacity sufficient to handle the pitch cylinders.
It comes up in pieces, and he has to assemble it while he is keeping the balance in the safety line.
First the foundation. Then a middle part and a platform and finally dismantled the upper part of the little service crane.
Then he could begin to erect the upper part of the main crane.
With that in place, they were now enabled to mount the working platform for the pitch cylinder work.
And finally, replacement of the 300 kg heavy pitch cylinders was possible.
With two complete sets of everything, were they able to let one team erect all the maintenance tool on day 1, and the other team could do the replacement work on day 2.
It ends up to be the result of our effort, and after few days of operation, it worked perfectly for them.
The whole idea of a service cran on top of a windmill was born, and this turned out to be the pilot project even it was an emergency which brought us there.
It is easy to see where Liftra has there idea to there service cran. They brought it with them out of NEG Micon.
The story of how we got it all hung up is entirely different.
Halfway through we run into big trouble. Five M30 bolt arrange as shown in a picture of the crane foundation was, what we have to do with. They should carry the main crane, the deck and the load capacity of the cran of course and they couldn't.
Whatever I do in my calculations model, the math told me, that they couldn't carry the load on a credible level of safety.
I was drinking coffee, not in cups but barrels. Everyone involved in the project calls me during a whole week without any news from me.
>>How goos it, Andersen<<! >>No progress<<. >>How goos it, Andersen<<! >>No progress<<.Then crisis meeting at NEG Micon where I describe the main problem. The inner distance between the bolts was too small.
And there in the middle of that meeting, my old concrete ghost from M&T offered me support. >>Look at it as a composite cross-section Andersen! Come on<<!
>>If we can find a concrete product that reaches its full strength fast enough,(ordinary concrete shall use 28 days), we have a chance to use it as a pressure area outside those bolts who meet the press tension. Then the stress level will come down, in those bolts who meets tensile stress<<.
They were all mechanical engineer and the project leader expresses it as a brilliant proposal. They knew nothing about concrete. All of them though, I was educated as a mechanical engineer as they were, and none of them could see my concrete ghost who was standing next to me.
I could go home and try to calculate it as a composite cross-section. If my calculation model tells us, that it was possible, we have saved the project there had a value of 0,5 million DK at the time.
There was no guarantee before calculations were done and no guarantee before we had completed a full-scale test of the foundation to ensure, that the calculations model really reflected the physical situation.
We used ducosit as concrete, and in the end, we increased the safety factor by 25%. It was what we needed, and we got confirmed, that calculations model was real.
Of course, they did not ask me about anything before they patented the solution and the principle. No one asked himself if there were more in Anderson that they could benefit from.
Andersen! The man with the wrong DNA! Now I just need to show them who I was and learn them, that they could trust my judgments!
I have so many sensitive wind turbine drawing of the whole nacelle that I could have been a rich made today if I have taken them with me to China and started a career as a wind turbine producer back in 2000. It never crossed my mind.
It never crossed my mind either, that I one day will wake up to a life where I hardly can get bread on the table.
Andersen! You are born with the wrong DNA!
It is so far the most comprehensive project I have ever done as a consultant, where I have had the full responsibility for the constructions and the final design.
It was all written and run on Mathcad without problems.
Several hundred pages parametrise written equations that in the end act as a program. If you change load at the top, you could follow the load path through the entire construction down to every single bolt in the foundation.
In that way, your design process becomes a repeatedly iterative process to the very end.
Note the full-scale tests in both tasks. It was my old error with the level of the crane foundation, which I never forgot. I performed all the measurements correctly, but miss the base point, and then it turns out to be a significant error.
If you do all your right calculations on a wrong base model, the whole construction could collapse.
I really learn something of that error of mine, and that's why I always claim test of my calculations model when it was critical.To miss the bassed in my calculation was the only mistake, that was possible in the way I work, and it becomes a calculated risk its time I judged a new task.
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