• Journal of Wind Energy
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.43-49
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• 2014

Primarily, tower loads of a wind turbine arise from aerodynamic effect and a top head mass. But sometime asymmetric loads of rotor also affect on the tower loads. Especially ice formation on two blades out of three causes the asymmetric loads, because the ice formation on blades lead to large rotating mass imbalance. This rotating mass imbalance of rotor affects tower fatigue loads. So design load cases of ice formation on blade should be considered in the fatigue design loads of the tower according to GL guideline 2010. This paper describes the change of tower fatigue loads following increase of tower height in the condition of ice formation. Finally, the optimal operation strategy is examined in order to reduce tower fatigue design loads.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.57 no.4
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• pp.617-624
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• 2008

This paper proposes design and implementation of wind turbine simulators which incorporate the turbine dynamic characteristics. At first, the turbine output characteristic in steady state is modelled as a function of wind speed and then dynamic characteristics are modelled such as pitch angle control, torsional vibration, tower shadow effect, wind shear effect, and inertia effect. In addition, a wind speed simulator is developed which can generate the real wind speed pattern. The wind turbine simulator is implemented with 3[kW] M-G set(cage-type induction motor coupled with doubly-fed induction generator) at laboratory.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.205-221
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• 2017

The unsteady flow field disturbance between the blades and tower is one of the primary factors affecting the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine. Based on the research object of a 3MW horizontal axis wind turbine which was developed independently by Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, numerical simulation on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine system in halt state with blades in different position was conducted using large eddy simulation (LES) method. Based on the 3D unsteady numerical simulation results in a total of eight conditions (determined by the relative position with the tower during the complete rotation process of the blade), the characteristics of wind pressure distributions of the wind turbine system and action mechanism of surrounding flow field were analysed. The effect of different position of blades on the aerodynamic performance of wind turbine in halt state as well as the disturbance effect was evaluated. Results of the study showed that the halt position of blades had significant effect on the wind pressure distribution of the wind turbine system as well as the characteristics of flow around. Relevant conclusions from this study provided reference for the wind-resistant design of large scale wind turbine system in different halt states.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2009.04a
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• pp.49-59
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• 2009

Vibrations of the tower structures of 750kW and 6kW wind turbines(WT) are investigated by measurement and analysis. Acceleration responses of the WT towers under various operation condition are monitored in real time by the remote monitoring system using LabVIEW. Using the monitoring system, resonance condition of the tower structures is diagnosed with the wind speed data within the operating speed range. To predict the tower resonance frequency, 750 kW tower is modeled as an equivalent beam with a lumped mass and Rayleigh energy method is applied. For 6 kW WT, Rayleigh-Ritz analysis is carried out on the tower-cable coupled system. Calculated tower bending frequency is in good agreement with the measured value. Using the analysis model, parametric study is available in order to prevent the severe resonance.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2017

A series of coupled time domain simulations considering stochastic waves and wind based on five 1-h time-domain analyses are performed in normal operating conditions. Power performance and tower base Fore-Aft bending moment and pitching motion response of the floating spar-buoy wind turbine with 2 MW direct-drive PMSG have been analyzed by using HAWC2 that account for aero-hydro-servo-elastic time domain simulations. When the floating spar-buoy wind turbine is tilted in the wind direction, maximum of platform pitching motion is close to $4^{\circ}$. Statistical characteristics of tower base Fore-Aft bending moment of floating spar-buoy wind turbine are compared to that of land-based wind turbine. Maximum of tower base Fore-Aft bending moment of floating spar-buoy wind turbine and land-based wind is 94,448 kNm, 40,560 kNm respectively. This results is due to changes in blade pitch angle resulting from relative motion between wave and movement of the floating spar-buoy wind turbine.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.1115-1144
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• 2015

Current climate conditions along with advances in technology make further design and verification methods for structural strength and reliability of wind turbine towers imperative. Along with the growing interest for "green" energy, the wind energy sector has been developed tremendously the past decades. To this end, the improvement of wind turbine towers in terms of structural detailing and performance result in more efficient, durable and robust structures that facilitate their wider application, thus leading to energy harvesting increase. The wind tower industry is set to expand to greater heights than before and tapered steel towers with a circular cross-section are widely used as more capable of carrying heavier loads. The present study focuses on the improvement of the structural response of steel wind turbine towers, by means of internal stiffening. A thorough investigation of the contribution of stiffening rings to the overall structural behavior of the tower is being carried out. These stiffening rings are placed along the tower height to reduce local buckling phenomena, thus increasing the buckling strength of steel wind energy towers and leading the structure to a behavior closer to the one provided by the beam theory. Additionally to ring stiffeners, vertical stiffening schemes are studied to eliminate the presence of short wavelength buckles due to bending. For the purposes of this research, finite element analysis is applied in order to describe and predict in an accurate way the structural response of a model tower stiffened by internal stiffeners. Moreover, a parametric study is being performed in order to investigate the effect of the stiffeners' number to the functionality of the aforementioned stiffening systems and the improved structural behavior of the overall wind converter.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.36 no.11
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• pp.1455-1462
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• 2012

As the size of a wind turbine increases, the mechanical structure has to have an increasing mechanical stiffness that is sufficient to withstand mechanical fatigue loads over a lifespan of more than 20 years. However, this leads to a heavier mechanical design, which means a high material cost during wind turbine manufacturing. Therefore, lightweight design of a wind turbine is an important design constraint. Usually, a lightweight mechanical structure has low damping. Therefore, if it is subjected to a disturbance, it will oscillate continuously. This study deals with the active damping control of a wind turbine tower. An algorithm that mitigates the mechanical loads of a wind turbine tower is introduced. The effectiveness of this algorithm is verified through a numerical simulation using GH Bladed, which is a commercial aero-elastic code for wind turbines.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.9
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• pp.81-87
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• 2009

In this paper, remote monitoring system for wind turbine site is developed. This system is a hierarchical reliable monitoring system connected by wireless communication channels between monitoring host computer and modular slave measuring subsystems. The design of this systems; the slave measuring subsystems is placed in meteorological tower and wind turbine, and the supervisory host computer is in the safety zone. The slave measuring subsystems signals are from a meteorological tower, wind turbine generator and tower. For monitoring and command function, the supervisory computer is implemented with a PC using graphic user interface. This system can be transferred the information among host computer and remote computers through the Ethernet. Consequently we can get reliability but economic system. The system has the concept of universality and modularity, so it is simple and easy to implement in wind turbine test sites.

• International Journal of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2018

Due to integrated stochastic wind and wave loads, the supporting platform of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) has to bear six Degrees of Freedom (DOF) motion, which makes the random cyclic loads acting on the structural components, for instance the tower base, more complicated than those on bottom-fixed or land-based wind turbines. These cyclic loads may cause unexpected fatigue damages on a FOWT. This paper presents a study on short-term fatigue damage at the tower base of a 5 MW FOWT with a spar-type platform. Fully coupled time-domain simulations code FAST is used and realistic environment conditions are considered to obtain the loads and structural stresses at the tower base. Then the cumulative fatigue damage is calculated based on rainflow counting method and Miner's rule. Moreover, the effects of the simulation length, the wind-wave misalignment, the wind-only condition and the wave-only condition on the fatigue damage are investigated. It is found that the wind and wave induced loads affect the tower base's axial stress separately and in a decoupled way, and the wave-induced fatigue damage is greater than that induced by the wind loads. Under the environment conditions with rated wind speed, the tower base experiences the highest fatigue damage when the joint probability of the wind and wave is included in the calculation. Moreover, it is also found that 1 h simulation length is sufficient to give an appropriate fatigue damage estimated life for FOWT.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.709-726
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• 2015

In this study, a novel vision-based bolt-loosening monitoring technique is proposed for bolted joints connecting tubular steel segments of the wind turbine tower (WTT) structure. Firstly, a bolt-loosening detection algorithm based on image processing techniques is developed. The algorithm consists of five steps: image acquisition, segmentation of each nut, line detection of each nut, nut angle estimation, and bolt-loosening detection. Secondly, experimental tests are conducted on a lab-scale bolted joint model under various bolt-loosening scenarios. The bolted joint model, which is consisted of a ring flange and 32 sets of bolt and nut, is used for simulating the real bolted joint connecting steel tower segments in the WTT. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed vision-based technique is evaluated by bolt-loosening monitoring in the lab-scale bolted joint model.