{"681266":{"#nid":"681266","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Bridging the Gap: Reusing Wind Turbine Blades to Build Bridges","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EJud Ready first visited Beaverbrook Park for an adopt-a-stream event as a graduate student. When he moved to the northwest Atlanta neighborhood, he got involved with improvement efforts at the park.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt was a muddy mess back then. Over time, we added an exercise trail, playgrounds, a gazebo, and ball fields, but we didn\u0027t have a place where you could just walk through the woods,\u201d Ready said. The problem? A creek prevented easy passage, and the park lacked a bridge to cross it.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDespite receiving a grant from Park Pride, a nonprofit that helps residents improve their parks, Ready realized it wasn\u2019t nearly enough money to build a bridge over the rushing waters. Then Ready, a \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.mse.gatech.edu\/people\/jud-ready\u0022\u003Eprincipal research engineer\u003C\/a\u003E at the Georgia Tech Research Institute with a joint appointment in the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.mse.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Materials Science and Engineering\u003C\/a\u003E, learned that one of his colleagues was using decommissioned wind turbine blades for bridges.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EFor eight years, \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/arch.gatech.edu\/people\/russell-gentry\u0022\u003ERussell Gentry\u003C\/a\u003E, a professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/arch.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ESchool of Architecture\u003C\/a\u003E and a member of the \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.re-wind.info\/\u0022\u003ERe-Wind Network\u003C\/a\u003E, has explored how to upcycle wind turbine blades into functional infrastructure. Re-Wind, an international organization, has constructed two bridges in Ireland, where wind energy is more prevalent. The Beaverbrook bridge is the first in the U.S., but building it hasn\u2019t been a simple copy-and-paste process from across the Atlantic Ocean.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt\u0027s not recycling because we\u0027re not taking the material back to its original state; it\u0027s really adaptive reuse,\u201d explained Gentry. \u201cThink of it as the difference between wood and paper. You can take a tree and grind it up finely for paper, but if you leave it in its original form, you have wood. It\u2019s a much more capable material from a structural perspective.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELike almost everything in America, the blades are bigger than their European counterparts. \u0026nbsp;The 15-meter blade weighs around 7,000 pounds, so moving it from its first home in a Colorado wind farm to a Georgia public park was no easy feat. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa, Ready and Gentry established a team of a dozen Georgia Tech students, researchers, and alumni to bring the blade to Beaverbrook Park.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECayleigh Nicholson (architecture), Sakshi Kakkad (computing and architecture), who both graduated in 2024, and fourth-year civil engineering student Gabriel Ackall made sure the bridge was engineered well and that it complied with city regulations. Nicholson spent a semester surveying Beaverbrook to determine the best path and placement of the bridge. Kakkad developed software to better understand the geometry of the blade and position it in the bridge. Ackall was involved in the design process, working with the foundation contractor, Cantsink, to calculate stresses and deflections in the BladeBridges. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWe\u2019ve essentially had to design the entire structural system of the bridge\u0026nbsp;from scratch, as existing building and bridge codes do not have much information about either the composite materials used in wind turbine\u0026nbsp;blades or in adaptive reuse for new construction,\u201d Ackall noted. \u201cWe used advanced modeling software combined with the knowledge we\u2019ve gained from over a half dozen years of wind turbine\u0026nbsp;blade\u0026nbsp;testing and prototyping to make the bridge\u0026nbsp;a reality and ensure their safety.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EEven alumnus Tierson Boutte, CE 2002, who owns the tree company Boutte Tree, helped make the installation possible. \u201cWe\u2019re grateful to be able to give back to the community by pruning the trees for the crane to be able to lift the turbine blades,\u201d he said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOn a sunny day in mid-March, the bridge was installed with a combined crew of 16 from Chappell Construction, led by alumnus \u0026nbsp;Wade Chappell, IE\u0026nbsp; 2000; Williams Erection Company, owned by alumnus Art Williams, CE 1983; and ironworkers from Local 387. Finally, with a little help from an unusual source, a neighborhood can fully enjoy its park.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EVideo by Maxwell Guberman\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/em\u003E\u003Cbr\u003E\u003Cem\u003EPhotos by Allison Carter\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EGeorgia Tech researchers and alumni have installed a new kind of footbridge in an Atlanta park.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Georgia Tech researchers and alumni have installed a new kind of footbridge in an Atlanta park. "}],"uid":"34541","created_gmt":"2025-03-20 19:36:07","changed_gmt":"2025-03-21 12:21:39","author":"Tess Malone","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2025-03-20T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2025-03-20T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"676628":{"id":"676628","type":"image","title":"Turbine-Bridge-012.JPG","body":"\u003Cp\u003EPhoto by Allison Carter\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1742499624","gmt_created":"2025-03-20 19:40:24","changed":"1742499624","gmt_changed":"2025-03-20 19:40:24","alt":"Bridge installation ","file":{"fid":"260437","name":"Turbine-Bridge-012.JPG","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-012.JPG","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-012.JPG","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":7098229,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-012.JPG?itok=byL00fsQ"}},"676630":{"id":"676630","type":"image","title":"Turbine-Bridge-017.JPG","body":"\u003Cp\u003EPhoto by Allison Carter\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1742499906","gmt_created":"2025-03-20 19:45:06","changed":"1742499906","gmt_changed":"2025-03-20 19:45:06","alt":"Turbine bridge installation","file":{"fid":"260439","name":"Turbine-Bridge-017.JPG","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-017.JPG","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-017.JPG","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":4136177,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-017.JPG?itok=x_XfGV8h"}},"676631":{"id":"676631","type":"image","title":"Turbine-Bridge-019.JPG","body":"\u003Cp\u003EPhoto by Allison Carter\u003C\/p\u003E","created":"1742499906","gmt_created":"2025-03-20 19:45:06","changed":"1742499906","gmt_changed":"2025-03-20 19:45:06","alt":"bridge installation","file":{"fid":"260440","name":"Turbine-Bridge-019.JPG","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-019.JPG","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-019.JPG","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":2987817,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/03\/20\/Turbine-Bridge-019.JPG?itok=F3Giwm8W"}}},"media_ids":["676628","676630","676631"],"groups":[{"id":"660369","name":"Matter and Systems"}],"categories":[{"id":"137","name":"Architecture"},{"id":"145","name":"Engineering"},{"id":"154","name":"Environment"}],"keywords":[{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"193652","name":"Matter and Systems"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ETess Malone, Senior Research Writer\/Editor\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cbr\u003Etess.malone@gatech.edu\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}