Experimental and analytical study on the performance of wind turbine tower attached with particle tuned mass damper

According to the global wind energy council report, a dramatic increase in the annual wind installations is needed to satisfy the goal of net-zero, which means there will be a large market for wind turbine towers. Therefore, the safety and suitability of wind turbine towers must be ensured by certain methods under wind and seismic excitations for reliable wind energy production. This paper presents a comprehensive study involving experimental, analytical, and computational approaches to study the performance of the particle tuned mass damper (PTMD) that is attached to a 1/20 scaled wind turbine tower model through a shaking table test. During the test, the overall performance of PTMD is analyzed under earthquake and equivalent wind excitations. The results indicate that PTMD can significantly mitigate the dynamic responses of the tower top and tower body. Then, a parametric study of PTMD is carried out to detail its damping mechanisms. The results show that the robustness of PTMD is good, and PTMD possesses a wider vibration control frequency band. Finally, based on the experimental test, a finite element model is built, and then a comparison of experimental and numerical results is conducted to investigate the vibration reduction effect of PTMD under coupled wind and earthquake excitations. The numerical simulation and experimental results agree well, and PTMD has good vibration reduction effectiveness under coupled wind and earthquake excitations. Besides, the numerical simulation indicates that aerodynamic damping can restrain the vibration of the wind turbine tower to a certain extent. Both the experimental and numerical results indicate that the PTMD can reduce the vibration of wind turbine towers significantly under wind and earthquake excitations.