Nonlinear coupling vibration analyses of large-scale wind turbine system

Abstract

With the development of wind energy, the unit capacity of wind turbine is becoming larger and the height of the support tower is getting higher. Limited by the transport conditions, the diameter of the tubular steel tower cannot further increase with the increase of the tower height, which results in the lower natural frequencies of the tower. The higher and more slender wind turbine towers are more sensitive to the external excitation and many tower collapses have occurred in recent years because of the interplay with the longer rotor blades. A 2 MW wind turbine system with a 120 m full steel tubular tower is taken as an example in this study to research the nonlinear coupling vibration mechanism under the normal operation case and the emergency shut-down case. An integrated model of large-scale wind turbine system including the tower, blades, hub, and nacelle is established by the open-source software FAST to study its nonlinear interaction vibration mechanism. Under the normal operation load case, the acceleration response of the steel wind turbine tower is greatly affected by the rotational frequency of the rotor. The maximum accelerations in the fore-aft and side-side directions both appear around the middle-upper height of the tower. Under the emergency shut-down load case, the maximum fore-aft acceleration response appears at the top of the tower, but the maximum side-side response still appears around the middle-upper height of the tower. The first-order vibration mode plays a dominant role in the top fore-aft acceleration and the second-order vibration mode has great contribution to the side-side acceleration under the emergency shut-down load case. The numerical results of this study can provide insight into the vibration control mechanism of the full steel tower.