Kurt Bilau

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Kurt Bilau (born March 29, 1872 in Posen , † January 17, 1941 in Berlin-Friedenau ) was a German officer , designer and inventor . He is best known as a pioneer in the use of wind energy and as a developer of progressive wing shapes for windmills ( "Bilausche Ventikanten" ). Furthermore, as a private scholar , he dealt with various topics from technology, history, science and philosophy, in particular theories of cosmology, the origin of the world , and the history of the world and civilization.

Life

Youth, training and military career

Bilau comes from Posen in today's Poland, at that time part of the Kingdom of Prussia .

After school and training to become an engineer , Bilau joined the Imperial Army as a professional soldier , where he served in the artillery force . During the First World War he won several awards, including the Iron Cross II and I Class . Most recently, he was promoted to the rank of major , which later earned him the nickname of "wing major" while working on windmill blades . Due to a war injury, Bilau was honorably discharged from military service after the end of the First World War in 1918.

Inventor and designer for windmill technology

A windmill equipped with Bilau's Ventikanten in Kleve - Donsbrüggen
Detail of the wing mechanics at the Scholtenmühle in Rees

After the end of his career as a soldier, Bilau turned to new fields of activity: As part of his work in the artillery, Bilau often had to do with windmills, as these are outstanding structures in the artillery landscape on the one hand as an advanced observation post for target reconnaissance and on the other hand as a fixed point for the Fire control and sighting of targets over long distances were used. Because of his regular contact with the windmillers, Bilau experienced the mill death ; Around 1900, competition from more modern steam, motor and electric mills forced many traditional wind and water mills to give up their operations. Bilau decided to develop new techniques to improve the windmills and make them more competitive and more viable than modern mills. Bilau also used his knowledge of aerodynamics , which he had acquired as part of external ballistics in the artillery.

First, around 1920, Bilau developed a Ventimotor (wind motor, from the Latin Ventus = wind), a small, four-blade wind turbine for generating electricity . As a target group, Bilau also and above all had windmillers in mind, for whom the venti motors should serve as a source of additional income. When it came to the geometry of the rotor, Bilau was based on aircraft propellers . Despite a high degree of efficiency, economic success was not achieved because of the difficult economic situation in Germany in the 1920s, especially for Müller. After just a few years (1926), Bilau had to give up the company founded to market the invention. In the following year he published his first book on the subject of wind power, which was followed by several over the next few years (see section “Literature”).

Despite the economic failure of the Ventimotor , Bilau did not give up. Next he developed improved windmill blades in close cooperation with the physicist Albert Betz , head of the aerodynamic research institute in Göttingen . In his design, which was evidently inspired by airplane wings, Bilau divided the wing along the tail into two parts, an aerodynamically optimized breastplate ("Ventikante") and an adjustable rear wing ("Swivel Tail"). Due to the aerodynamically optimized profile, in particular the vent edge, the wing should allow a significantly improved energy utilization . The wing surfaces were made of aluminum, so they didn't need a canvas covering. The rotating stern could be adjusted via a lever mechanism during operation without having to stop the wing cross. In this way, the shape of the wing could be adapted to the wind speed, which further improved the energy yield and, if necessary, the rotating stern could be used as a brake (like a brake flap on an airplane) to bring the mill to a standstill. Disadvantages of the Bilauschen wings due to the metal material and the mechanics were the high weight and the high price.

In 1930, Bilau found a miller in Gallen in Saxony who was ready to install and test the new type of wing construction on his Paltrockmühle . The success was resounding: With the new blades, the mill immediately achieved a two to three-fold improved wind power yield. As a result, Bilau concluded a license and cooperation agreement in 1931 with the Mühlenbauanstalt and Maschinenfabrik Karl Kühl from Vordamm near Landsberg near Stettin in Pomerania , which from then on was to take over the distribution of Bilau's grand pianos as the sole manufacturer. On the occasion of the annual show for the restaurant trade [...] and the food trade in Berlin in 1936, a complete post mill with Bilau wings was bought and moved from Kunitz in Thuringia to the Berlin exhibition center at the radio tower, where it remained until 1937. The German Reich supported the installation of the wings with loans for the millers and the Rhenish provincial administration supported the modernization of the numerous mills on the Lower Rhine.

Because of the good results and the funding, Bilau's wings enjoyed increasing popularity: By the time they were most widespread (around 1940), around 160 windmills in Germany and a few abroad were equipped with Ventikanten. In the end, even the improved blades did not manage to stop the decline of windmill technology, and with the windmills the vent edges also disappeared.

Already during Bilau's lifetime and after his death in 1941 (at the height of the spread of his technology), Bilau's ideas were taken up by other mill builders and further developed. Similar systems to the Bilausche revolving stern are, for example, the wing systems from the Dutch mill builders Ten Have or van Riet .

Preserved mills with Bilausch wings

Today only a few mills with Bilau blades are preserved:

  • Breberen

  • Donsbrüggen

  • Rees

  • Period

  • Kogel

  • De Hoop , Norg, the Netherlands

Other research and activities

In addition to wind power, the versatile and interested Bilau dealt with various topics from technology, history and philosophy after completing his military service. He gave lectures, published in magazines and wrote books. Contents included technical areas such as vehicle construction, but also questions that sometimes extended into the areas of mysticism and metaphysics, such as theories on the origins and end of the world, the history of the earth and civilization, astronomy , cosmology and cosmogenesis , Hanns Hörbiger's theory of the ice , theories of interpretation the biblical revelation of John and the fall of Atlantis .

Fonts (selection)

  • Kurt Bilau: The wind power in theory and practice: common understanding. Aerodynamics . P. Parey, Berlin 1927, DNB  572401353 .
  • Kurt Bilau: Windmill construction one and now . M. Schäfer, Leipzig 1933, DNB  572401361 .
  • Kurt Bilau: The wind utilization for the power generation: Theoret. Basics and practical application in d. Scoop, meal u. Silo mill under special. Consider. d. Electricity Gener . Parey, Berlin 1942, DNB  572401345 .

literature

  • Uwe Karstens: Kurt Bilau. Approaching a visionary . Ed .: Association for the Preservation of Windmills and Watermills in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg eV self-published, Ascheberg 2003.
  • Uwe Karstens: Kurt Bilau. Approaching a visionary . Ed .: Association for the preservation of wind and water mills in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg eV Volume 2 . Self-published, Ascheberg 2010.

Web links

Commons : Kurt Bilau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Bernhard Beier: The 'wing major' - Kurt Bilau as inventor, designer and child of his time. Atlantisforschung.de, accessed on May 20, 2011 (based as main source again largely on Uwe Karstens: Kurt Bilau. Approach to a visionary see literature).
  2. ↑ a b c Uwe Karstens: Kurt Bilau. Approaching a visionary (see literature)
  3. ↑ a b c Bernhard Beier: Kurt Bilau: The 'wing major' and Atlantis. Atlantisforschung.de, accessed on May 20, 2011 .
  4. ↑ Erich Hau: Wind power plants: Basics, technology, use, economy . 4th edition. Springer, 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-72150-5 .
  5. ↑ Lars Bloch: Possibilities and limits of wind energy - onshore and offshore in comparison . Thesis. University of Rostock (Maritime Systems and Flow Technology ), Rostock 2004, ISBN 3-638-34291-3 .
  6. ↑ According to information on the private website Windmühlen im Kreis Lüben , accessed on February 4, 2019, this windmill came from a company in the Silesian Raudten (today Rudna (Powiat Lubiński) )
  7. ↑ Mills with vented blades. (No longer available online.) Hans-Jürgen Noack, formerly in the original ; Retrieved May 23, 2011 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.windmühlen-dampflokomotiven.de  
  8. ↑ Kurt Bilau: The motor vehicle after the war . In: Mitteleuropäischer Motorwagen-Verein (Ed.): Automobil-Rundschau . tape 20 . Printed by R. Boll, Berlin 1917, DNB  578891115 (issue 1-8).

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b In some sources it is claimed that Bilau was active in the air force as a pilot or even as an aircraft designer. This assumption is obvious in view of his subsequent activity as an aerodynamicist, but it is unproven. Only the service as an artilleryman is proven . The specified source http://atlantisforschung.de has z. Sometimes very esoteric in character and therefore cannot be classified as reliable.
personal data
SURNAME Bilau, Kurt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer, designer and inventor
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH January 17, 1941
Place of death Berlin-Friedenau