Dynamic analysis of a small-sized wind turbine in the Midwest of Brazil

Abstract

Abstract Nowadays, despite the implementation of new wind farms in Brazil, it still is difficult to form partnerships with companies in the sector, which significantly contributes to the gap in information provided by national literature and the lack of knowledge about the mechanical behavior of wind turbines subjected to transient wind effects. Therefore, through a Research and Development Project to optimize and improve modeling in wind systems, the Brazilian electric power company Eletrobras Furnas aims to facilitate the construction of smaller wind turbines to supply energy to regions far from the Brazilian coast that do not have high generation potential due to the incidence of low-speed winds. Two relevant aspects directly linked to the performance of this kind of structures are: (i) determining their natural frequency and (ii) ensuring that this frequency does not coincide with any external vibration frequency that the structure may experience in its lifetime. Wind turbines are complex systems with many degrees of freedom and their own frequencies associated with the respective mode shapes in which they naturally vibrate. These frequencies are inversely related to the mass and directly related to the stiffness of the structure. Thus, through numerical modeling using the Finite Element Method, the present article aims to list some of the main factors that can affect the prediction of the natural frequency of a real-scale wind turbine prototype and to evaluate its dynamic behavior, considering its rotor revolution frequency, its blade passing frequency and the wind characteristics of its operating area.

Keywords

• small-sized wind turbine
• finite element method
• natural frequencies
• dynamic analysis