Vibration Mitigation of Wind Turbine Towers Using Negative Stiffness Absorbers

The application of dynamic vibration absorbers (DVA) to Wind Turbine (WT) towers has the potential significantly improve damping tower and nacelle responses, increasing thus reliability WTs. Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) is limited by requirement large masses, in association its installation location. In this study, two alternative concepts are considered. First, released from WT tower, using a low stiffness connection. This option based on seismic isolation concept. Additionally, novel passive absorption configuration implemented, KDamper essentially an extension TMD, introducing negative (NS) elements. Instead additional mass, capability can be increased value NS element. Therefore, always indicates better properties than TMD with same mass. For nonlinear response build-in house software developed. performance proposed mitigation numerically examined. All methods present superior behaviour as compared uncontrolled structure, however only KDamper-based designs increase effective retaining masses reasonable ranges.