Abstract
Wind power is a substantial resource to assist global efforts on the decarbonization of energy. The drive to increase capacity has led to ever-increasing blade tip heights and lightweight, slender towers. These structures are subject to a variety of environmental loads that give rise to vibrations with potentially catastrophic consequences, making the mitigation of the tower’s structural vibrations an important factor for low maintenance requirements and reduced damage risk. Recent advances in the most important vibration control methods for wind turbine towers are presented in this paper, exploring the impact of the installation environment harshness on the performance of state-of-the-art devices. An overview of the typical structural characteristics of a modern wind turbine tower is followed by a discussion of typical damages and their link to known collapse cases. Furthermore, the vibration properties of towers in harsh multi-hazard environments are presented and the typical design options are discussed. A comprehensive review of the most promising passive, active, and semi-active vibration control methods is conducted, focusing on recent advances around novel concepts and analyses of their performance under multiple environmental loads, including wind, waves, currents, and seismic excitations. The review highlights the benefits of installing structural systems in reducing the vibrational load of towers and therefore increasing their structural reliability and resilience to extreme events. It is also found that the stochastic nature of the typical tower loads remains a key issue for the design and the performance of the state-of-the-art vibration control methods.
Highlights
In recent decades, climate change has been gradually becoming a major societal challenge due to high levels of CO2 and other hazardous emissions
Structural control of the vibrations experienced by wind turbine towers is a promising way to prolong the lifecycle of wind energy installations and to increase the survivability of the structure, with a direct positive impact on the energy’s Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)
The proven concept of tuned mass dampers has been among the moststudied systems, followed by tuned liquid dampers and tuned liquid column dampers
Summary
Climate change has been gradually becoming a major societal challenge due to high levels of CO2 and other hazardous emissions. Large areas of land are required for new wind farms to respond to the increasing energy demand [11], which often raises concerns over the preservation of forests and natural wildlife habitats. Despite these disadvantages and considering that WTs are typically designed to last for about 20–25 years, repowering could be an option to increase the capacity of existing plants without occupying extra land [12]; yet, repowering is limited by the structural bearing capacity of the tower. The conclusions stemming from this comprehensive review are presented
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