Mitigation of tower and out-of-plane blade vibrations of offshore monopile wind turbines by using multiple tuned mass dampers

Abstract

Offshore wind turbines are vulnerable to external vibration sources such as wind and wave excitations due to the increasing size and flexibility. It is necessary to mitigate the excessive vibrations of offshore wind turbines to ensure the safety and serviceability during their operations. Some research works have been carried out to control the excessive vibrations of the tower and the in-plane vibrations of blades. Very limited study focuses on the out-of-plane vibration mitigation of blades. In the present study, a detailed finite element (FE) model of the latest NREL 5MW wind turbine is developed by using the FE code ABAQUS. The tower and blades are explicitly modelled, and the rotating of the blades is considered. Multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMDs) are proposed to be installed in the tower and each blade to simultaneously mitigate the out-of-plane vibrations of the tower and blades when the wind turbine is subjected to the combined wind and wave loadings. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method are systematically investigated. Numerical results show that MTMDs can effectively mitigate the out-of-plane vibrations of the tower and blades when the wind turbine is in either the operational or parked condition.