Attaching semi-flexible solar panels

[tillergirl]

Only strips, and the edges of course like the Photonic advice. It was very easy. On TG I had used some teak strips with grooves. Worked but not as neat as polysuphide. They are big panels and have had absolutely no threat of getting the wind under them obviously because of the edge strips.

 

[RichardS]

Sorry, but I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say here. I think you may be getting confused with anticlastic curvature in shells, which arises from applied moments along opposing side and not from point loads.

If it helps, imagine a panel 20m long and 0.5m wide to be formed around a surface curved across the panel. Fixings at the corners will give you nice curves at the ends but will do little to curve the middle of the panel.

Thanks for the suggestion, though.

OK .... you must be talking about a surface which is effectively a section of a sphere. Those of use on here who simply affix the corners have a surface which is curved in one plane but essentially flat in the perpendicular plane. We simply align the long side of the panel in the curved plane. My belief is that this is the most common curved surface configuration found on boat decks but I fully accept that it is not the only configuration.

Richard

 

[dunedin]

We use the 2 inch wide industrial Velcro. Seems to work fine, just takes some force + care to remove them when want to.

 

[LONG_KEELER]

I used hardwood blocks on each of the four corners.

Blocks stuck down with CT1 and panel screwed to the blocks.

My main problem was to avoid screwing into the gelcoat.

I decided to move a panel and the CT1 came off ok.

I remember reading somewhere that panels do not like to be hot so raising them a bit helps with ventilation . They work on the intensity of the light rather than heat. I believe that some controllers monitor the temperature of the panels.

 

[JumbleDuck]

OK .... you must be talking about a surface which is effectively a section of a sphere.

Nope. Cylindrical.

 

[RichardS]

Nope. Cylindrical.

The many of us who secure with the 4 corners on a cylindrical surface and have panels which don't lift, have never tried to lift, and never will lift are thanking our lucky stars that the space-time continuum on our boats yields a very special type of physics.

Richard

 

[JumbleDuck]

The many of us who secure with the 4 corners on a cylindrical surface and have panels which don't lift, have never tried to lift, and never will lift are thanking our lucky stars that the space-time continuum on our boats yields a very special type of physics.

Or you have a high enough radius of curvature and/or a small enough axial dimension so that the lifting effect doesn't matter much.