Conception Design of a Novel Vibration Damping Mechanism for Vibration Reduction of a High-Rise Wind Tower

A dynamic model of a high-rise wind tower is built based on the assuming modes method to investigate its along-wind dynamic responses. Unlike the traditional dynamic model, the tower body is regarded a continuous system with concentrated masses, forces and moments as well as distributed forces. Additionally, effects of the tower body’s variable cross-section area and the blades and nacelle assembly weights are considered at the same time in this work. The aerodynamic thrust on the blades and the distributed wind forces on the tower body are generated based on the Kaimal spectrum assumption of the pulsing wind speed. A modal analysis and transient dynamic responses are tested on a high-rise wind tower through the established dynamic model and the results are verified by finite element simulations with different models. Additionally, a novel vibration damping mechanism is designed to reduce vibrations of the supporting tower and a good vibration damping effect is obtained. No additional tuned masses are required for this novel vibration damping mechanism. This modeling and analysis method as well as the vibration damping mechanism design can contribute to the design of a good wind tower to certain extent.