In the 80 years since the shocking collapse of Washington's Tacoma Roads Bridge, engineers have designed to minimize resonance, a universal weakness of suspended structures. If not designed to cope with vibrations caused by forces such as wind, the frequency of these forces can create tension and inevitably cause structure failure.
When Jim Clare was considering how to focus mirrors in a concentrated solar energy power plant, he considered hanging them from cables, but remembered footage of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge shaking and falling apart. I did. To determine how well these suspended solar panels can withstand potentially destructive vibrations, Clair and his company Skysun LLC in Cleveland, Ohio, conducted NASA's Glenn Research in 2016. He enlisted the help of the Center to ensure his design was safe from dangerous resonances.
Glenn College dynamist Trevor Jones went to nearby Lorain County Community College to work on a prototype of the system. Jones caused vibrations in the cable with a hammer and measured the resulting vibrations. Based on this data, Jones designed a program that could accurately model the tensile strength of a design against wind vibrations of any magnitude. After entering the dimensions, the program did the calculations, proving that Clair's idea worked without falling apart.
Today, Skysun builds a variety of suspended solar energy generation systems, from the hammock-like Skysun Solar Pollinator to full-size solar pergolas that provide both electricity and shade.
