Please enter the following info in the fields above:
- Your Name as the Card title
- The link to your Module 7 folder in our Autodesk Construction Cloud project
Please also type the first few letters of your first name into the Link to Student field, then hover over your name from the list of matching records and click the blue plus sign to link this entry to your Design Journal.
Then, share your Design Journal entry here (replacing these instructions) ... Click the text area below the headers and just start typing your response. There's no need to add new properties.
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Step 1 - Generative Design Framework (Floder Link: https://acc.autodesk.com/docs/files/projects/6db2c3ca-7a2c-4f34-96a1-8a8189c7754d?folderUrn=urn%3Aadsk.wipprod%3Afs.folder%3Aco.l4S0HLxgRpKEMlT5aIG8tw&viewModel=detail&moduleId=folders)
Step 2 - Generative Design Study
Design Decision Selected: Wind Turbine Tower Geometry Optimization
This design decision focuses on the structural geometric parameter optimization of wind turbine towers (tower body only, excluding blades and power generation equipment), with the goal of maximizing material and construction economy while satisfying structural stability and transportation constraints. Wind turbine towers are typically conical steel structures, and geometric changes can significantly affect overall performance and cost control.
We used the following three design variables:
- Tower Height(m)
- Bottom Radius(m)
- Top Radius(m)
and evaluated the results using the following three evaluation metrics:
- Material Usage: Estimated using the Solid.Volume node to calculate the solid volume, reflecting material consumption and carbon footprint;
- Construction Cost: Estimated using a volume function and unit construction cost;
- Transport Success Rate: Simulated based on a function relationship between the tower base diameter and transportation limits, with a smooth decline from 1 to 0.
There are clear trade-offs between these parameters and outputs: increasing tower height and base radius improves structural stiffness and wind energy efficiency but increases material costs and transportation difficulty. The optimization objective is to achieve a balance among structural performance, construction economy, and construction feasibility.
Step 3 - Generative Design Study Results
X-axis: Material Usage
Y-axis: Construction Cost
Each red dot represents a solution generated by a combination of tower body design parameters.
From the scatter plot, it can be clearly observed that material usage is almost linearly related to construction costs. This is because construction costs in this model are calculated primarily based on volume; the larger the volume, the more material is required, and the corresponding costs increase accordingly.
This linear trend indicates that the key to design optimization lies in how to control volume growth while meeting the minimum structural performance requirements. Additionally, by comparing the transportSuccessrate of different designs, we can identify many structures that, despite having low costs, are not feasible for transportation and are therefore eliminated.
Ultimately, we selected an optimal design (tower height 60m, bottom radius 5m, top radius 1m) as the best model, which has the following characteristics:
- Material usage is controlled within a reasonable range (Material Usage ≈ 15.3 m³)
- Construction cost is moderate (Cost ≈ 233,734)
- Transport success rate is 1.0 (i.e., can be transported safely)
This decision strikes a balanced trade-off between structural economy and transportation feasibility, making it a result with strong practical reference value in actual engineering applications.
