fixture for transporting more than two windmill blades together

Packaging people can design almost anything you want try talking to one.

thanks for your positive reply. can you give me some details about these packaging people so that I can take guidance from that?

The blades are not straight. In real life, they are curved, so they don't stack 3 x 3 in opposition.

You should be able to design a shipping fixture that would hold 3 in a triangular stack and that would save a lot of shipping costs. Keep up the good work.

Mr. Gee

Thanks for your positive reply and valuable guidance. I think that type of staking will capture more space as compare to Opposite staking. What you think ?

Can you separate them with expandable foam filled trash bags similar to how repair parts are often shipped? It conforms to irregular shapes.

Hello Guest,

why not join, we are pretty kind you know.

With regard to your packaging ideas.............. I assume you are talking of the giant three bladed wind mills which can vary but are something like 60 metres high?

These are very large and heavy items. But if I can make a suggestion..........

I doubt the blades would fit into a standard sized container, like you find on a ship.

Is your idea to fit a complete windmill in one 'box'? Or did you choose the apparently arbitrary number '9' because this would make a reasonable size to transport, and then transport the towers one by one?

You have mention only the blades for transport. Perhaps this could be by making a rail truck with at least 12"x12" steel girders at each end of the car. Then you can use old tires as packing round each blade to stop any damage from the blades bolted at one end and gradually stacked to fill the rail car? If you wanted nine you could fix five going left to right and four going right to left, as you look at the side of the car?

Though I have not seen them close up, my thought is to lay two 'propellers', nose to tail as it were, which should make a more or let symmetrical box shape, and to make a mould from polystyrene and use 4"x6" or similar to box them together. I think the towers are made in several different bits because transporting them after erecting them at the factory would be too costly?

Or think completely out of the box (forgive the pun) and design a container which would transport the props' and the tower together. The towers I have seen are built using steel sheets round a strengthened core of RSJ's, so the un-assembled towers can fit into a relatively small space. Forgive me if this was your idea in the first place?

just thinking while typing, so had ideas and put them straight onto paper so as to speak.

Good luck and keep un informed please?

Hello again Guest,

take a look at this site. This is a whole lot larger than I had in mind. They used a huge truck to transport just a single blade! And that blade is amost 200 feet long. So the tower is about 500 feet high? WOW!

http://www.acppubs.com/article/CA6562788.html?industryid=48569

Hello Gest,

you may be interested in this site which mentions a lorry which can carry three 'Wings' as they call them, on one trailer.

http://trailer-bodybuilders.com/mag/trucks_special_trailers_transport/

Note the weight of the Generator (90 Tons)!!!!!!

A new market for heavy-haul and low-loader trailers has developed in Europe in recent years. It is in designing trailers for the transport and erection of windmill generators. Companies such as Scheurle in France, Nooteboom in Holland, and Goldhofer in Germany are all active in providing transports for these extremely long loads and heavy components that are getting bigger and heavier all the time.

Windmill rotor blades or "wings" measure 45 meters (148 feet) and longer. Double and triple extendable trailers can be used for these long loads hauling two blades at a time. Royal Nooteboom and its alliance partner Scheurle have developed a special trailer that can haul three wings at one time, each 45 m (148 ft) long.

The wing transporter has four axle lines, obtained by combining two modular trailers of the Euro Combi type, plus special adapters and extendable beams. The low floor height of the Euro Combi allows the three wings to be carried without exceeding the four-meter (13 ft 1½") legal road height. Swing axles give it a high ground clearance when moving off-road, and steering axle displacement up to 60° provides maneuverability at the construction site. The modular trailer is formed as a spine trailer for the transport of wings, but transformed into other configurations for the transport of the cylindrical tower sections, or the very heavy turbine that is mounted at the top of the tower. A 90-tonne (200,000 lb) turbine, for example, could be hauled by a trailer with 7 axle lines and a 4-axle tractor.

The height of wind power plants in Europe during the 1990s was about 30 to 50 meters (100 to 165 feet). Gigantic wind turbines now have a hub height of 100 meters (330 feet) and more. The smaller tower segments can be carried on gooseneck or flatbed trailers. Large tower segments require modular trailers with extendable vessel decks. Some tower segments exceed 100 tonnes (220,000 lb).

Thanks for co-ordination. I already seen sites whatever you stated in above discussion. But, still real picture is not coming in my mind. So, I simplified the problem definition as, blade length upto 30 meter, Diameter upto 3 meter. So that it will be easy to stack it in 3 x 3 structure. Now , could you give suggestions on it ?