Mitigating the structural vibrations of wind turbines using tuned liquid column damper considering soil-structure interaction

This paper considers the potential of using a Tuned Liquid Column Damper (TLCD) to reduce structural vibrations of a wind turbine tower. The effect of TLCD on wind turbine towers, including the soil-structure interactions for a monopile foundation was modelled theoretically and scaled laboratory experiments were carried out to validate these results. The tower of the turbine is represented as a Euler beam with a set of springs at the boundary to simulate the soil-structure interaction. TLCD design was carried out using such a model and the reduction in tower vibrations due to the deployment of TLCD was then examined for various loading conditions in the frequency and the time domain. The efficiency of TLCDs for reducing structural vibrations was investigated for tuned and detuned conditions. The response of a small-scale model was simulated along with that of a full-scale turbine and parametric studies around the variations of inputs related to uncertainties were performed. Experiments were carried out on a scaled model turbine to examine the effectiveness of the TLCD. The practicalities of installing a TLCD in a full-scale turbine were examined.