Rauline report and the N.A.S.A. |
In August 1973, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration which had been charged by the U.S. government (Richard M. Nixon) with collecting information on wind energy, came across a 58-page memo in French written in May 1958 by the Direction des Etudes et Recherches d'E.D.F. (Service des Etudes et Recherches Hydrauliques - Division Energie du Vent) The N.A.S.A. translated it.
I found this document on the Internet Archives site. It is titled « NASA TT-F-15037 Expérimental aerogenerator Type BEST - Romani - Description, Assembly, Test program ».
I knew from Mr Georges Vallée (research engineer at the wind energy division of EDF) that it was written by one of its members: Georges Rauline (in collaboration with Lucien Romani). Georges Vallée was kind enough to get me the original version. I have scanned it and it is available in PDF format.
However, the document requires some additional information. The text does not contain any information that is not already available on this site. The illustrations are more interesting (the pagination is that of the N.A.S.A. document):
- Figure 1-b (page 23/52) represents a very interesting plan of the installation. Only points A, B, C, D and E remain on-site in 2021,
- Figure 2 (page 24/52) is a plan of the wind turbine itself as seen from the hut that served as the command post during the tipping,
- Figure 5 (page 28/52) is reproduced on this site (Design features),
- The top figure on page 35/52 shows a test wind turbine at the top of the large pylon at Saint-Cyr (1950-1955: prototypes),
- The bottom figure on page 37/52 shows stress tests carried out on the fourth blade (the one in the lower foreground of the colour photograph on the home page of this site). These tests took place at the Etablissement Aéronautique de Toulouse.
- Figure 2, (page 36/52) shows the 1/20th scale model of the wind turbine with a person standing next to it. I did not know this complete model (as in the photograph): only the tripod was in the hangar on the site.
- Figures 4 to 18 (pages 38 to 52/52) show the construction of the turbine.
I scanned almost all the photographs and put them on the page "EDF or BEST photographs".
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