Experimental study on mitigating vibration of floating offshore wind turbine using tuned mass damper

Compared to the onshore wind turbine, the floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) suffers from worse environmental loads during its operation, leading to complicated dynamic responses. Excessive vibration can be potentially harmful to the structural safety and reliability. The Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) is regarded as a promising vibration mitigation device and has been popularized in FOWTs recently. However, the TMD performance in FOWT vibration mitigation is still difficult to investigate due to the flexibility of the FOWT system and the variety of excitations. In this paper, we present an experimental study of dynamic response mitigation of an FOWT under complex environmental loads. A highly adaptive TMD is designed and constructed based on the FOWT tower vibration characteristics. The integrated FOWT-TMD test system is set up. Extensive tests are then conducted with different offshore environments and TMD operating states. The results show that TMD can effectively reduce the FOWT peak acceleration amplitude and the peak base bending moment by 7.8% and 8.8%, respectively, in the survival condition. The present work will serve to verify the effectiveness of TMD and lay the foundation for experimental techniques on advanced FOWT controllers.

Automated summary

This paper presents an experimental study on the dynamic response mitigation of a floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) under complex environmental loads. A highly adaptive Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) is designed and constructed to effectively reduce the vibration of the FOWT. The results verify the effectiveness of TMD and provide a foundation for experimental techniques on advanced FOWT controllers.