Unsteady performances of a parked large-scale wind turbine in the typhoon activity zones

Numerous large-scale wind turbines have been built in tropical cyclone zones in China during the last decades. However, considerable failures of parked wind turbines have been reported in typhoon activity zones each year. Many researches have been conducted to investigate the failure using theories of meteorology, fatigue, vibration, flutter and buckling. However, in the most studies, the aerodynamics of wind turbines were analyzed in analytical or simplified manner. To figure out the unsteady performances of a parked wind turbine in typhoon activity zones, a wind model is established by various wind speeds, directions and turbulence intensities, based on the observation data of super typhoons. The unsteady aerodynamics of a parked wind turbine, consists of three blades and a tower, were then investigated through numerical simulation. It has been found that the wake interaction between the blades and the tower can strongly affect the aerodynamic forces on the wind turbine, which highly depends on the wind direction. Critical directions for wind load were found to be E, W, NW, and NE directions. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.