Abstract:
Tower oscillation are a concern in large scale horizontal axis wind turbines (hawt), as they have detrimental effect on the fatigue life. In this paper, vibration isolation principle based solution is proposed to reduce the loads transmitted to the tower and fore-aft oscillations. The concept proposed here requires the nacelle to have translational degree of freedom relative to the tower. Then an isolator (spring-damper) is employed between the nacelle and tower. Because of this modification, the loads to the tower are transferred through isolator as opposed to direct transmission in the conventional design. Here, damper is realized through a linear generator. Linear generator acts as a linear damper with variable damping coefficient. The advantage of using linear generator is that it converts the damped energy into useful electrical energy. The effectiveness of the proposed concept is demonstrated on a 1.5mw turbine through simulations. © 2022, american institute of aeronautics and astronautics inc. All rights reserved.