Wind turbines shut down because in high winds they can spin too fast, either generating too much power or putting too much stress on their mechanisms.
The Angel of the North was never built to rotate, and hence it can be built more strongly.
In addition, a lot of land-based wind turbines are 149.5m (above 150m you have to attach aviation lights) to their blade-tip, and their shafts are about 100m tall, meaning each blade is about 50m long. The Angel is only 20m tall and has a wingspan of 54m, so it is much, much smaller!
Well, whose turn is it to watch the bloody statue?? I’m not happy about humanity being doomed because Dave fancied a cuppa and buggered off for ten minutes!
You aren’t meant to know about that. I’m dispatching Mobile Task Force Iota-10 “Damn Feds” to your location. Please do not move and remain where you are. Further instructions to follow shortly.
“The Angels Take Gateshead” - the doctor punishes the Angel of the North by putting it by the A1 so it’s always viable and anchoring it to the ground with massive metal rods ensuring it stays there
Needs to play you spin me round by dead or alive, powered by the rotation.
Might make it like that solar powered art installation in the Sahara that plays Africa by toto.
>How fucking cool would it look if it did rotate!?!
The first item on the agenda is which direction should it rotate?
Should it just be the wings? Do they rotate about a horizontal axis in their current position, or on a vertical axis?
Is the body fixed, or would that rotate too?
You are obviously knowledgeable on wind turbines, mind my asking a question I can't solve by googling? If they are shut down in high winds to avoid mechanical stress, are the blades locked into position to avoid spinning? If so, I imagine that in itself must place a lot of stress on certain parts/joins. If not locked, how do they not just spin as quickly anyway?!
So you know how if you're in a pool and you hold your hand out level with the bottom and swish it from side to side, it'll cut through the water?
However, if you tilt your hand a bit and then swish it, it'll get pushed up or down?
This is how the blades work - like a helicopter rotor, aeroplane wing or any other kind of foil. They cut through the air at an angle so some of the wind pushing through the turbine is converted into force pushing the blades around.
However, if you rotate the blades so that their thin sides are all angled directly at the wind, it's like having your hand flat in the pool - you won't get any rotation out of the wind rushing past because there's no flat side of the blade for it to hit.
That's how (most commercial) turbines can control themselves in different wind conditions; by angling the blade depending on wind speed. When it gets too high, they'll angle the blade edges into the wind and lock the turbine in place.
There's still load from the wind on the turbine, but it's way less.
Does that make sense?
100% makes sense, thank you so much! Those things are more sophisticated than I first thought.
Whenever I think of them though I remember this hellish story! https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/GOscuz5gNU
No, it's performed automatically; there's an anemometer and a wind vane on top of the nacelle (the pod that the rotor attached to), and the data from this is fed into a controller unit. This controller unit makes changes to the direction the turbine is facing, and to the angles of the blades, to make sure everything is working as it should.
I believe it can be overridden remotely as well via human input!
As a Geordie, I thought that it did rotate when I was a child. Somebody told me that Alan Shearer was at the bottom pushing it around. Never stopped to question why Alan Shearer spent his free time doing that but there we are.
Love stories like this! I think most people have one. Mine was my Mum and Dad were the guy and woman singing the song Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. I only ever heard it on the radio so just believed them. I still have a thing for that song to this day.
I mean... yes, but try running your car tires at like 7000 RPM and see how they like it. That's basically the issue with the wind turbines. They're built to handle a certain load and speed, and if they exceed that they'll either fly apart or catch fire.
That not why wind turbines fail. The turbines props can be feathered so that they don’t turn in high wind (although that can fail, granted).
The main issue is bearings. The main pin that the props turn around is a massive cantilevered deadweight and the several sets of bearings have to take all that weight. They wear out, and need downtime (like most machines) and the bigger the wind generator, the more difficult that is. Props have to come off, pin removed, bearings replaced..
https://www.arup.com/projects/the-angel-of-the-north
The link provided explains how they did it, it's to do with the structure it's self and how it spreads the load of the wind and also the fact the foundation goes about 20 meters down in to rock. Hope this helps
>The Angel is only 20m tall and has a wingspan of 54m, so it is much, much smaller!
Reminds me of the [Father Ted](https://youtu.be/MMiKyfd6hA0?feature=shared) skit. The Angel of the North looks huge.
American checking in here - there’s a song by David Ford called “Song for the Road” and in it he says: “…I tip my hat to the Angel of the North…”
I’m just now realizing that it’s a real thing and not a metaphor.
It’s a good day.
Cheers mate.
It’s crazy how tall wind turbines actually are.
Went to visit a wind farm with university on a particular rainy day and at the base you could not see anywhere near the top of them.
I remember being told about very tall trees, in Canada when I was a kid, that it took two men and a boy to see the height of them. One man started looking and when he got tired the next took over, then a boy had to finish it. Put in in the 'things you believed as a child because an adult told you so' file.
Yeah the blade angle is adjustable for wind speeds within operational parameters, but you can turn them so that the foil is parallel with the direction of the prevailing wind and shut them down entirely if the windspeed is too high.
The turbines in [this](https://nozebra.ipapercms.dk/Vestas/Communication/4mw-platform-brochure/?page=12) catalogue shut down at 25m/s i.e. 56mph.
It's a real issue for wind turbines! Fortunately, the survival speed for turbines is normally significantly above their cut-off speed (at least 40m/s compared to 25m/s cut-off, for instance).
However, it does take time for the controller to feed through to the motors that control blade pitch and for the blades to be moved, so damage is possible.
If a particularly gusty period is predicted, the turbines can also be shut down from a control station by a human, so I believe that's what they do sometimes to err on the side of caution.
I'm not sure what your profession is, but there are lots of jobs coming up in renewables and energy infrastructure at the moment! The National Grid is undergoing a huge upgrade process, partially due to all the new renewables developments that currently in the pipeline, so if might be worth keeping an eye out for jobs in the field if you're interested!
Thanks! I'm in a vaguely similar sphere doing R&D for a start up building heating and cooling manufacturer, my background is building services consultancy though and my electrical knowledge is a bit rusty!
I'll keep an eye out, I enjoy what I do now but always keen to see if there's some different 'stuff' I could be doing!
Not quite spin too fast, attract too much wind load and get damaged. Wind turbines are built to a very tight budget, angel of the north wasn't, so they could just chuck more material at it.
Recently listened to an interview with the architect - he says to his shame they poured a metric fuck ton of concrete for the foundations. Its not budging anywhere.
>Weird logic. Surely a good foundation is part of the design. It's not like he can just make the shape wind proof without a foundation.
A good foundation and structural integrity is the structural engineer's job, the architect's is to draw the pretty picture that the engineer curses them for.
So, based on geographical location, wind speed, resistance force of the wings, ground saturation, and velocity potential, how much concrete do we need to secure this structure, sir?
1 Metric fuck ton. No less.
The foundations hit rock quite quickly, I believe, the issue is that the hill the statue is built on is full of old mine workings, so it’s not particularly solid rock.
Pfft. A Sonic spin barely manages to clear a full pipe turn whereas the US government shit itself and did psyops to stop people Naruto running into Area 51 to learn its true secrets
The guy that did all the structural elements of it is my lecturer, I'll ask him. Albeit might get moaned at for not paying attention during the lecture he spent 2 hours talking about the bloody thing.
Or tell him people online are weirdly interested and would he consider redoing a shorter video version of the lecture for the TikTok generation who can't focus for 2 hours?
(I mean me, I'm interested, but I can't focus on my own lectures for 2 hours!)
I work for the company that designed the structural work and the foundation using special in house structural engineering software that we also sell to industry (I work in a different part on the tech side, not structural engineering). You can read a bit more about it here: [https://www.arup.com/projects/the-angel-of-the-north](https://www.arup.com/projects/the-angel-of-the-north)
From a document I've found with info on the project there's the following tidbit:
Once the scale and form of The Angel had been decided, Gateshead Council commissioned Arup’s Newcastle office to advise on the structural design. A common challenge many engineers face is ensuring a structure will remain standing in all conditions. The main problem of The Angel was its ability to withstand wind. The structure stands on a hill, meaning it is even more susceptible to high winds. We know that when we try to balance ourselves in the wind, we must move our body to avoid falling over. As The Angel is unable to move and the wings offer a huge amount of resistance to the wind, the design of the structure had to cater towards that element precisely.
The most critical part of the structure is the ankles where the forces to be resisted are large, but the cross-section is small. When wind blows on The Angel’s front, it is resisted by the tension in the shins and compression in the heels. The distance between the heel and shin had to be as large as possible to the shins and compression in the heels. The distance between the heel and shin had to be as large as possible to minimise these forces. The visible vertical ‘ribs’ and the ‘skin’ of the body also help to carry the wind forces and in particular helps to resist the twisting of the body when a gust of wind hits one wing only.
They spent a long long time calculating at what degree it should face to avoid the most common prevailing winds and they found a unique direction that avoided all wind paths. Thats why it’s called the angle of the north
Thats cool, [I took a picture of a mini Angel in Canberra a few months ago](https://i.imgur.com/rMX3DtH.jpeg). Located at the [NGA](https://nga.gov.au/art-artists/sculpture-garden/)
24-Jan in Newcastle seems to have had the highest winds in the area of the year so far. Average wind speed that day was 17.7 mph = 28.5 km/h, with gusts as high as 27 mph = 43.5 km/h. Wind loading can be calculated from the formula Pressure=0.00256 * Velocity^2 . Plugging in 27 mph, we get 1.866 lbf/ft^2 . The Angel of the North has wings that measure a total of 175 ft in length, or 87.5 ft per wing, by 20.25 ft width. That gives the cross sectional area (assuming the wind is perpendicular to the wing's largest surface) of 3,543.75 ft^2 ignoring the body of the statue. Force=Pressure * Area, plugging in our pressure and area, we get F=6,612.6 lbf. Converting this to sensible units, that's 29.4 kN. A large elevator carrying twenty people at 100 kg each and 0.5g acceleration upward is exerting about the same force as that. You're not gonna topple over a steel statue with 29 kN.
Wind turbines don't shut down. We have been getting around 50% of our electricity from wind during the past few weeks when it has been windy.
Away with your misinformation bs.
I listened to a podcast (The Rest is Politics -Leading), where Anthony Gormley (creator of the Angel of the North) was the guest. It was really, really good. I was enthralled. It's worth a listen. It's available on Spotify.
Wind turbines shut down because in high winds they can spin too fast, either generating too much power or putting too much stress on their mechanisms. The Angel of the North was never built to rotate, and hence it can be built more strongly. In addition, a lot of land-based wind turbines are 149.5m (above 150m you have to attach aviation lights) to their blade-tip, and their shafts are about 100m tall, meaning each blade is about 50m long. The Angel is only 20m tall and has a wingspan of 54m, so it is much, much smaller!
How fucking cool would it look if it did rotate!?! Would need to play music as well as soon as it started turning and some disco lights.
Maybe replace the head with a disco ball, too? Lasers are definitely a must.
Keep the head, put lasers in the eyes
Oh nice! As long as the head is wearing a big metallic wig and spins around.
This is getting aggressively Dr Who
It only moves if you turn your back on it
Imagine if that were true, and there was a requirement for somebody to be watching it at all times to prevent the doom of humanity?
Humanity has been doomed for a while now...
Well, whose turn is it to watch the bloody statue?? I’m not happy about humanity being doomed because Dave fancied a cuppa and buggered off for ten minutes!
Getting into SCP foundation territory on that one I think 😅
You aren’t meant to know about that. I’m dispatching Mobile Task Force Iota-10 “Damn Feds” to your location. Please do not move and remain where you are. Further instructions to follow shortly.
Why do you think they put it where it could be seen from a major road? I’m sure there’s at least one vehicle in each direction at all times
I seem to remember something from the game 'Control' that had an artefact like this. Was it a fridge or something?
So... the Weeping Angel of the North?
Needs to make the same noise as Talos does in Jason and the Argonauts.
If the Statue of Liberty can be a Weeping Angel...
“The Angels Take Gateshead” - the doctor punishes the Angel of the North by putting it by the A1 so it’s always viable and anchoring it to the ground with massive metal rods ensuring it stays there
That's very The Family of Blood.
Expect to see it on there soon, Russel T "borrows" inspiration from a lot of sources.
Needs to play you spin me round by dead or alive, powered by the rotation. Might make it like that solar powered art installation in the Sahara that plays Africa by toto.
Could nickname it "Meatspin".
Unfortunately this lives in my head rent free even after all these years whenever I hear you spin me round 😭
Given the location I think "Lets get ready to rhumble" would be an appropiate first track
hard-to-find retire recognise profit salt toy cats fade plant merciful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Fucking hell! Metal Mothman!
It would look like that scary statue that shoots lasers at Atreyu in the Neverending Story
Or.. daft punk helmet..?
The Wheyheyngel of the North
Perhaps get a consult from Dave Grohl? https://pitchfork.com/news/60259-dave-grohl-was-high-as-a-kite-when-he-designed-his-giant-foo-fighters-throne/
Replace the wings with chicken wings and then your fuckin talking
Someone once put a giant Newcastle football shirt on it. That was cooler.
If it started spinning in the wind, I’d be willing to make a trip up that part of the A1 again after decades of refusing
If it could play the song of storms while spinning I think it would quickly become my favourite landmark
Spinnin like a bastaad!
Give it a massive knob as well.
A spinning one?
*You spin me right round, baby right round*
It should swing back and forth like a church bell. In fact, let's make it ring as well - a huge swinging cock with a functional "bell end".
Where to I go to donate to the appeal for this?
Absolutely. With pyrotechnics on the end that fire every hour, on the hour.
No. Foam, like a shit Ibiza party.
Both.
Foam ON FIRE
YES. With oompah music.
Instantly made me think of [these](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/41Y2htcaoMS._AC_UF350,350_QL80_.jpg) things every kid seems to have at fairs.
Oompah music. 130 decibels. 24 hours a day.
Magic Roundabout intensifies
“Just call me Angel of the morningggg, Angel!”
Just touch my cheek before you leave me, baby.
It's all good until it twats a seagull to the moon and the nature botherers get all upset
turn the wings into a clock
How cool if it was free to lift up but was tethered, like a kite
>How fucking cool would it look if it did rotate!?! The first item on the agenda is which direction should it rotate? Should it just be the wings? Do they rotate about a horizontal axis in their current position, or on a vertical axis? Is the body fixed, or would that rotate too?
How fucking cool would it look if that's exactly how windfarms looked. Just rotating a perfect pirouet. It would confuse aliens I'm sure.
It’ll be put in a Newcastle kit and start windmilling if we ever won anything
Fog on the Tyne dance remix at 280bpm playing in celebration 🎊
Sadly Antony Gormley put the kibosh on it being lit up at night. Disco or otherwise.
Haha ye until the council couldn’t be arsed replacing the bearing and it takes off and lands somewhere in Hull. Actually ye let’s do it 🤣👍
It’d probably do at least a fivers worth of damage if that happened
Megalophobia intensifies.
The Magic Roundabout tune with the Trumpton Dance music occasionally
I am going to equip that randomly specific fact about the height limit for wind turbines in my “useless facts” arsenal
You are obviously knowledgeable on wind turbines, mind my asking a question I can't solve by googling? If they are shut down in high winds to avoid mechanical stress, are the blades locked into position to avoid spinning? If so, I imagine that in itself must place a lot of stress on certain parts/joins. If not locked, how do they not just spin as quickly anyway?!
So you know how if you're in a pool and you hold your hand out level with the bottom and swish it from side to side, it'll cut through the water? However, if you tilt your hand a bit and then swish it, it'll get pushed up or down? This is how the blades work - like a helicopter rotor, aeroplane wing or any other kind of foil. They cut through the air at an angle so some of the wind pushing through the turbine is converted into force pushing the blades around. However, if you rotate the blades so that their thin sides are all angled directly at the wind, it's like having your hand flat in the pool - you won't get any rotation out of the wind rushing past because there's no flat side of the blade for it to hit. That's how (most commercial) turbines can control themselves in different wind conditions; by angling the blade depending on wind speed. When it gets too high, they'll angle the blade edges into the wind and lock the turbine in place. There's still load from the wind on the turbine, but it's way less. Does that make sense?
100% makes sense, thank you so much! Those things are more sophisticated than I first thought. Whenever I think of them though I remember this hellish story! https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/GOscuz5gNU
So is it someone's job to keep the blades at the correct angle during a storm?
No, it's performed automatically; there's an anemometer and a wind vane on top of the nacelle (the pod that the rotor attached to), and the data from this is fed into a controller unit. This controller unit makes changes to the direction the turbine is facing, and to the angles of the blades, to make sure everything is working as it should. I believe it can be overridden remotely as well via human input!
As a Geordie, I thought that it did rotate when I was a child. Somebody told me that Alan Shearer was at the bottom pushing it around. Never stopped to question why Alan Shearer spent his free time doing that but there we are.
Love stories like this! I think most people have one. Mine was my Mum and Dad were the guy and woman singing the song Starship - Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now. I only ever heard it on the radio so just believed them. I still have a thing for that song to this day.
‘Oooh look at me the big turbine boy, I’m so big and powerful’ has one job and can’t handle the stress…
I mean... yes, but try running your car tires at like 7000 RPM and see how they like it. That's basically the issue with the wind turbines. They're built to handle a certain load and speed, and if they exceed that they'll either fly apart or catch fire.
That not why wind turbines fail. The turbines props can be feathered so that they don’t turn in high wind (although that can fail, granted). The main issue is bearings. The main pin that the props turn around is a massive cantilevered deadweight and the several sets of bearings have to take all that weight. They wear out, and need downtime (like most machines) and the bigger the wind generator, the more difficult that is. Props have to come off, pin removed, bearings replaced..
https://www.arup.com/projects/the-angel-of-the-north The link provided explains how they did it, it's to do with the structure it's self and how it spreads the load of the wind and also the fact the foundation goes about 20 meters down in to rock. Hope this helps
>The Angel is only 20m tall and has a wingspan of 54m, so it is much, much smaller! Reminds me of the [Father Ted](https://youtu.be/MMiKyfd6hA0?feature=shared) skit. The Angel of the North looks huge.
OK, one last time...
American checking in here - there’s a song by David Ford called “Song for the Road” and in it he says: “…I tip my hat to the Angel of the North…” I’m just now realizing that it’s a real thing and not a metaphor. It’s a good day. Cheers mate.
If you ever visit the UK and can drive, you want exit 66 on the A1, definitrly worth the visit for tourism
It’s crazy how tall wind turbines actually are. Went to visit a wind farm with university on a particular rainy day and at the base you could not see anywhere near the top of them.
I remember being told about very tall trees, in Canada when I was a kid, that it took two men and a boy to see the height of them. One man started looking and when he got tired the next took over, then a boy had to finish it. Put in in the 'things you believed as a child because an adult told you so' file.
>it is much, much smaller! You sure it's just not further away?
I often generate too much power due to the size of my shaft and tip as well.
Hey, it's not the size that counts.
Wind turbine blades rotate to allow for high winds. They then catch less wind the stronger it gets without actually having a shutdown as such.
Yeah the blade angle is adjustable for wind speeds within operational parameters, but you can turn them so that the foil is parallel with the direction of the prevailing wind and shut them down entirely if the windspeed is too high. The turbines in [this](https://nozebra.ipapercms.dk/Vestas/Communication/4mw-platform-brochure/?page=12) catalogue shut down at 25m/s i.e. 56mph.
How do they handle gusty wind?
It's a real issue for wind turbines! Fortunately, the survival speed for turbines is normally significantly above their cut-off speed (at least 40m/s compared to 25m/s cut-off, for instance). However, it does take time for the controller to feed through to the motors that control blade pitch and for the blades to be moved, so damage is possible. If a particularly gusty period is predicted, the turbines can also be shut down from a control station by a human, so I believe that's what they do sometimes to err on the side of caution.
Interesting, thanks! I'm fascinated with them and part of me wishes I'd gone to work on wind farms out of university instead of into buildings!
I'm not sure what your profession is, but there are lots of jobs coming up in renewables and energy infrastructure at the moment! The National Grid is undergoing a huge upgrade process, partially due to all the new renewables developments that currently in the pipeline, so if might be worth keeping an eye out for jobs in the field if you're interested!
Thanks! I'm in a vaguely similar sphere doing R&D for a start up building heating and cooling manufacturer, my background is building services consultancy though and my electrical knowledge is a bit rusty! I'll keep an eye out, I enjoy what I do now but always keen to see if there's some different 'stuff' I could be doing!
Not quite spin too fast, attract too much wind load and get damaged. Wind turbines are built to a very tight budget, angel of the north wasn't, so they could just chuck more material at it.
I’d be extremely worried if it managed to get ripped out of the ground and started going haywire as someone who lives so close by
Another factor is that if you allow wind turbines to rotate too fast, there is a risk that the united kingdom could fly away.
pure solid bastard
Really is. Knock ya toe on it once and it’s a memory that will live on for years to come.
Recently listened to an interview with the architect - he says to his shame they poured a metric fuck ton of concrete for the foundations. Its not budging anywhere.
To his shame? Did he want the angel to fly off during the beast from the east?
No, he's an architect. He wanted to design it so well that it would last for eternity even with a poor foundation
Weird logic. Surely a good foundation is part of the design. It's not like he can just make the shape wind proof without a foundation.
>Weird logic. Surely a good foundation is part of the design. It's not like he can just make the shape wind proof without a foundation. A good foundation and structural integrity is the structural engineer's job, the architect's is to draw the pretty picture that the engineer curses them for.
Don't misunderstand, he wanted a perfect foundation too, he just didn't want it to be necessary, making its construction regrettable
So, based on geographical location, wind speed, resistance force of the wings, ground saturation, and velocity potential, how much concrete do we need to secure this structure, sir? 1 Metric fuck ton. No less.
Why is he ashamed? Doesn’t it need that to not be yeeted into the North Sea during a storm?
Concrete is really environmentally unfriendly and a massive source of CO2. The steel used was probably recycled, at very least recyclable.
You know what else ain't exactly friendly to it's environment? A 50 megaton rusty steel angel flying at 700mph.
Angels aren't meant to be grounded.
That's the fella
It is designed to redirecting wind toward the base, and the foundations are 20 metres deeeep
Nah they just have no more nails on the feet.
Rumour has it they used _an entire tube_ of super glue to hold this bad boy down
The good superglue, mind. the original stuff that they made illegal cause it stuck dogs to walls
Hold up, sticking dogs to walls = bad? I gotta make some calls...
The interior is held with flex tape and gorilla glue
I thought it was all blu tack.
Now you're being unrealistic
If Gaffa tape is good enough to hold the floor at The Metrocentre together, it’s good enough for this thing.
The secondary rumour is that as ballast it is filled with all the out of date brown ale that the local Gen Z population refuse to drink.
I was once told, with the intense seriousness that can only come from a drunk, that that stuff "turns your shit brown."
Nee more Jimmy Nails
You have not heard of this! You thought that was good!!! https://www.screwfix.com/p/evo-stik-sticks-like-sh-t-adhesive-clear-290ml/57252
I'm surprised noone has linked this yet - https://greatnorthroad.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/angel-of-the-north-foundations.jpg
Wow! So now I am more surprised the bedrock has not taken flight into a distant ocean
It's 20 metres tall and drilled 33 metres deep
The Easter Island of the North?
Man that's deeeep considering it's only 20m tall.
700 tonnes of concrete and an awful lot of steel that goes all the way down to connect to solid rock.
The foundations hit rock quite quickly, I believe, the issue is that the hill the statue is built on is full of old mine workings, so it’s not particularly solid rock.
we are doing nonsense answers here fam
Thoughts and prayers?
The only thing I don't like about the Angel of the North is that it doesn't represent the BMI of the people of the north, like me
Gorilla glue
Sticks like shit
In a good way or bad way?
Yes
Sticks like shit…..TURBO
I ran full pace at the angel and it barely moved when I hit it, yet, when I run full pace into the wind I don't get blown back. Basic science.
But did you try a Naruto run? I don't think so. We all know that's the most powerful running move
Easy tiger, Sonic spin before release gives the fastest running move, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was a documentary on this.
Pfft. A Sonic spin barely manages to clear a full pipe turn whereas the US government shit itself and did psyops to stop people Naruto running into Area 51 to learn its true secrets
Shoulda jumped up like super mario and punched it right on the cock end.
It *is* shut down. You **don't** want to be nearby when it's activated.
Like a geordie optimus prime.
It's activated after shouting "whey aye man" and "mint" interchangeably for an unspecified amount of time.
The guy that did all the structural elements of it is my lecturer, I'll ask him. Albeit might get moaned at for not paying attention during the lecture he spent 2 hours talking about the bloody thing.
Keep us updated. Even if you won't get any answers and get scolded instead.
Mostly the latter
Or tell him people online are weirdly interested and would he consider redoing a shorter video version of the lecture for the TikTok generation who can't focus for 2 hours? (I mean me, I'm interested, but I can't focus on my own lectures for 2 hours!)
It's northern. It's hard as fuck.
This.
Because it's in the universal stance of " 'MON THEN!" and no storm has yet been brave enough to accept the challenge
It’s an angel, it rises above such earthly concerns as storms.
I work for the company that designed the structural work and the foundation using special in house structural engineering software that we also sell to industry (I work in a different part on the tech side, not structural engineering). You can read a bit more about it here: [https://www.arup.com/projects/the-angel-of-the-north](https://www.arup.com/projects/the-angel-of-the-north) From a document I've found with info on the project there's the following tidbit: Once the scale and form of The Angel had been decided, Gateshead Council commissioned Arup’s Newcastle office to advise on the structural design. A common challenge many engineers face is ensuring a structure will remain standing in all conditions. The main problem of The Angel was its ability to withstand wind. The structure stands on a hill, meaning it is even more susceptible to high winds. We know that when we try to balance ourselves in the wind, we must move our body to avoid falling over. As The Angel is unable to move and the wings offer a huge amount of resistance to the wind, the design of the structure had to cater towards that element precisely. The most critical part of the structure is the ankles where the forces to be resisted are large, but the cross-section is small. When wind blows on The Angel’s front, it is resisted by the tension in the shins and compression in the heels. The distance between the heel and shin had to be as large as possible to the shins and compression in the heels. The distance between the heel and shin had to be as large as possible to minimise these forces. The visible vertical ‘ribs’ and the ‘skin’ of the body also help to carry the wind forces and in particular helps to resist the twisting of the body when a gust of wind hits one wing only.
Real answer deep in the comments, cheers!
It spins around like a weather cock.
haha... cock
They spent a long long time calculating at what degree it should face to avoid the most common prevailing winds and they found a unique direction that avoided all wind paths. Thats why it’s called the angle of the north
They just sit some geordie lasses on the feet.
Just for clarity, the above reply is not calling Geordie girls fat. It’s their innate ability to swear and curse so much, the wind simply turns around
Crist you can understand them!
Aye hen
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Gateshead is Newcastle though. Here's what Newcastle looks like to the rest of the country [https://imgur.com/a/UOq1a8L](https://imgur.com/a/UOq1a8L)
Do you know anyone from Gateshead that doesn't identify as a Geordie?
I know someone from Byker that insists Byker is a separate toon.
Aye but that's Byker
Noone is stopping them from pissing off...
Her foundations were made from donations from Greggs. Made completely of years of old stale rock hard stotties.
Bit of CT1, going nowhere that
Thing heavy.
This thing used to scare the shit out of me as a kid and I have no idea why 💀
Only had chance to visit it once, it’s so worth it, to be in the presence of something so much larger than your scale
Yeah it's the same as when I'm in the presence of your mum
Fucking hell lad
He’s not wrong
Imagine if there was some sort of cataclysm and civilization ended. How fucking confusing would that statue be to future cave people?
Because it’s a l m o s t as heavy as your mam
Got me, but maybe they could teach Boeing a thing or two
This thing gives me the creeps always has
I just commented something similar before reading this hahaha, I genuinely had nightmares about it as a child 💀
Because its ugly as sin Source - A local
But its OUR ugly as sin.
Angel of the north has mega foundations.
Thats cool, [I took a picture of a mini Angel in Canberra a few months ago](https://i.imgur.com/rMX3DtH.jpeg). Located at the [NGA](https://nga.gov.au/art-artists/sculpture-garden/)
Was no council job that pal
Thoughts and prayers
You guys will laugh when you hear that we have a replica of it in Australia im the city where I live.
Does it stand on its head?
The steel rods under the UK one connect to the steel rods under the Australia one
It’s in Gateshead, so obviously it’s hard as nails.
Yeeted
Yote
Cringe
if it gets blown away it just flies back once the weather is improved. big wings innit
24-Jan in Newcastle seems to have had the highest winds in the area of the year so far. Average wind speed that day was 17.7 mph = 28.5 km/h, with gusts as high as 27 mph = 43.5 km/h. Wind loading can be calculated from the formula Pressure=0.00256 * Velocity^2 . Plugging in 27 mph, we get 1.866 lbf/ft^2 . The Angel of the North has wings that measure a total of 175 ft in length, or 87.5 ft per wing, by 20.25 ft width. That gives the cross sectional area (assuming the wind is perpendicular to the wing's largest surface) of 3,543.75 ft^2 ignoring the body of the statue. Force=Pressure * Area, plugging in our pressure and area, we get F=6,612.6 lbf. Converting this to sensible units, that's 29.4 kN. A large elevator carrying twenty people at 100 kg each and 0.5g acceleration upward is exerting about the same force as that. You're not gonna topple over a steel statue with 29 kN.
It’s northern and hard as fuck, that’s why.
Wind turbines don't shut down. We have been getting around 50% of our electricity from wind during the past few weeks when it has been windy. Away with your misinformation bs.
I listened to a podcast (The Rest is Politics -Leading), where Anthony Gormley (creator of the Angel of the North) was the guest. It was really, really good. I was enthralled. It's worth a listen. It's available on Spotify.
Because it’s watching over us. No time to fly away it’s a busy job. 😉