Double-Track Nonlinear Energy Sink for Dynamic Response Control in Wind Turbine Towers

Abstract

With the trend of larger wind turbine rotors to utilize more wind energy, wind turbine towers are becoming consequently higher and more flexible. Thus, the dynamic response of towers appears more significant and needs to be controlled to avoid potential resonance and even damage. This paper proposed a new type of double-track nonlinear energy sink (NES) to explore its mitigation effects on dynamic response of wind turbine towers. Firstly, the double-track NES is designed with optimal parameters. Subsequently, dynamic response of the onshore wind turbine tower with the double-track NES installed are investigated experimentally in wind tunnel. A comparison of dynamic response of wind turbine tower with or without double-track NES control is presented to prove that the novel NES can rapidly attenuate the response of the underlying tower, for both in-flow and cross-flow directions. This study reveals the potential application of the double-track NES in dynamic response control of wind turbine tower.