Numerical and Experimental Analysis of the Boundary Conditions Effects on the Dynamics of Wind Turbines

Abstract

Conducting an experimental modal test on a wind turbine attached to a tower is very challenging due to the size of these structures, number of sensors required, accessibility to desired measurement locations, time required for testing, and cost. Therefore, having an insight into the effects of the coupled turbine/tower and correlating the dynamic characteristics of an assembled wind turbine to experimentally measured modes of an individual blade or modes of a turbine disconnected from the tower is desirable. In this paper, the effects of boundary conditions on the dynamic behavior of a wind turbine are numerically and experimentally studied. Furthermore, the mode contribution matrix of the wind turbine assembled to the tower is used to identify the contributions of the modal vectors of the tower and three-bladed turbine to the dynamic characteristics of the assembled wind turbine.