Vibration Control of Large Wind Turbine Blades with Unidirectional Cable Pendulum Damper

Abstract

A unidirectional cable pendulum damper is proposed to mitigate vibration responses of large-scale wind turbine blades in the edgewise direction, and the effectiveness of the proposed device for vibration response control is investigated. First, the configuration and working principles of the vibration damper are introduced. Second, the Euler–Lagrange equation of the single blade vibration damping system with the vibration damper is derived based on the Hamilton’s principle. At last, considering the effect of blade rotation, the wind load that applied on the blade was calculated using the rotating sample spectrum. The dynamic responses of blades are also calculated using the MATLAB/Simulink platform. The peak value and standard deviation of blade responses were taken as evaluation indexes to evaluate the vibration control efficiency of the device with varying the parameters such as the mass ball pendulum length, the fixed pulley block installation position, the stiffness and the pre-stress of the flexible cable. The optimal parameters of the vibration damper are investigated and obtained based on the assumption that no pounding happens between the mass ball of the vibration damper and the inner wall of the blade. Results show that the length of the mass ball pendulum and the installation position of the fixed pulley block, the values of which are within a reasonable range, can ensure the optimal performance of the vibration damper. The displacement of the mass sphere can be effectively reduced by increasing the stiffness of the flexible cable, and the pre-stress shows marginal beneficial effect on the damping performance and the displacement control of the mass sphere. Using the optimum parameters, the vibration damper can keep the mass ball within a safe running distance. The reduction of the peak value and the standard deviation of the blade displacement can reach 89.36% and 89.83%, respectively. The proposed device space can effectively reduce the blade tip response of the wind turbine by occupying less space. Moreover, the size of the device installation space can be changed by adjusting the weight ball swing length, which is suitable for the vibration control of the wind turbine blade edgewise direction.