Sunday 6 January 2019

Aeolian Harp - wires in a gale on South Stack


My last attempt to model the note produced by wind across overhead transmission wires failed. We experienced the effect again during a gale on South Stack off Anglesey. The note is low, down towards 100 Hz. Then I found this article by the great physicist, James Jeans https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SUbCAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT94&lpg=PT94&dq=how+does+the+wind+in+the+wires+make+a+note&source=bl&ots=j_1AwDO2_z&sig=SUibbG1dTpoA9Pfo1QRCGTurY2w&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjT0M2t99nfAhX-ThUIHXfCDdkQ6AEwFHoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=how%20does%20the%20wind%20in%20the%20wires%20make%20a%20note&f=false His analysis is for a 40 mph wind over half-inch rigging on ships. That would be the same sort of thickness as one of these power cables and the winds were strong enough to blow us over so would be close to 40 mph. He comes up with a figure of 261 Hz. That sounds about right. From experiment, he gets a vortex forming every time the air travels a distance of 5.4x the diameter of the cable. He calculates the distance traveled by the air in one second, works out how many diameters of rope that is and then divides by 5.4 to get the frequency. This is an Aeolian harp effect. Now I want to see one! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolian_harp