Performance of a 3D pendulum tuned mass damper in offshore wind turbines under multiple hazards and system variations

Misaligned wind-wave and seismic loading render offshore wind turbines suffering from excessive bi-directional vibration. However, most of existing research in this field focused on unidirectional vibration mitigation, which is insufficient for research and real application. Based on the authors' previous work (Sun and Jahangiri 2018), the present study uses a three dimensional pendulum tuned mass damper (3d-PTMD) to mitigate the nacelle structural response in the fore-aft and side-side directions under wind, wave and near-fault ground motions. An analytical model of the offshore wind turbine coupled with the 3d-PTMD is established wherein the interaction between the blades and the tower is modelled. Aerodynamic loading is computed using the Blade Element Momentum (BEM) method where the Prandtl's tip loss factor and the Glauert correction are considered. Wave loading is computed using Morison equation in collaboration with the strip theory. Performance of the 3d-PTMD is examined on a National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) monopile 5 MW baseline wind turbine under misaligned wind-wave and near-fault ground motions. The robustness of the mitigation performance of the 3d-PTMD under system variations is studied. Dual linear TMDs are used for comparison. Research results show that the 3d-PTMD responds more rapidly and provides better mitigation of the bi-directional response caused by misaligned wind, wave and near-fault ground motions. Under system variations, the 3d-PTMD is found to be more robust than the dual linear TMDs to overcome the detuning effect. Moreover, the 3d-PTMD with a mass ratio of 2% can mitigate the short-term fatigue damage of the offshore wind turbine tower by up to 90%.