The Effect of Continuous Trapezoidal Straight Spoiler Plates on the Vortex-Induced Vibration of Wind Turbine Towers

Abstract

This paper proposes a method of controlling the vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of wind turbine towers by adding continuous trapezoidal straight spoiler plates (TS) onto their outer surface: a fluid–solid coupling model was constructed to simulate the processes of Karman vortex generation and shedding on the different surfaces of an original tower (O–tower) and a tower with TS (TS–tower) with assumed and actual Re, while the VIV frequencies were also calculated and compared; the effects of the TS geometry parameters on the VIV frequency of towers were studied to investigate the recommended size; a modal analysis was carried out to research the effects of TS on the vortex-induced resonance risk of towers; and the simulation results as well as relevant research conclusions were validated by an analogical wind tunnel test.

Keywords

• wind turbine towers
• VIV
• trapezoidal straight spoiler plates
• VIV frequency
• wind tunnel testing