Tinius Olsen plays a key role in making sure that safety-critical fasteners for wind turbines reach the marketplace at the best possible quality.
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Tinius Olsen
For more than two decades, Cooper & Turner, global manufacturers who have established operations in the USA, UK, and China, has been a crucial part of the renewable energy industry, producing fixings and bolts for the entire wind turbine structure.
This includes towers in some challenging and remote environments, for example, off-shore wind farms.
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Tinius Olsen
We started servicing the wind turbine market more than 25 years ago, long before it became an integral part of the global energy supply.
David Briggs, Head of Global Quality and Technical Information, Cooper and Turner Group
Briggs continued, “The manufacture and provision of high quality, safety-critical fasteners, with the ability to operate in some of the most hostile environments in the world, has gained us an unrivalled reputation in the wind turbine marketplace.”
Tinius Olsen has been a key part of the production process for quality control and safety. Cooper & Turner have utilized a Tinius Olsen Super L Universal Testing Machine for more than ten years, and it has proved to be one of the most reliable machines within the production process.
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Tinius Olsen
“The Tinius Olsen Super L is utilised multiple times per day, with its maximum capacity of 3000 kN ensuring the testing of each of our safety-critical fasteners meet all international standards and beyond.”
“We currently supply to all aspects of wind turbine construction including Foundation, Tower Construction, Blade to Hub, Nacelles and Off-shore Transition Pieces. All have their specific tolerances due to the different stresses generated by the motion dynamics throughout the structure.”
All steel is purchased to adhere to Cooper &Turner’s own internal specifications with this in mind.
These specifications have been developed over the years to maintain good ductility while ensuring the right tensile strength. They have to be extremely robust, as these products are employed for turbines both onshore and off-shore.
“Bolts have diameters ranging from M16 right up to M80, are generally made of alloy steel, and are heat treated to meet the mechanical properties of ISO898-1 property class 8.8 and 10.9.”
“Most fasteners within a turbine are installed by Torque so we have to ensure the product we supply hits the target preload and a determined Torque. The Tinius Olsen machine is capable of applying a torque of 60,000 Nm and measuring loads of up to 5000 kN.”
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Tinius Olsen
The company possesses its own in-house testing facility, which specializes in non-destructive and destructive metal testing. They are one of the few within the industry which can test large bolts at full size.
Other in-house testing includes tensile testing, salt spray testing, in addition to Rockwell, Charpy, and Micro hardness.
“Over the last 10 years the Tinius Olsen Super L has enabled us to stand out from our peers. Our customers are able to relax knowing that because of this excellent machine, we are able to test our critical products to the maximum safety requirements.”
This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Tinius Olsen.
For more information on this source, please visit Tinius Olsen.