Performance Investigation of Circular TLD Devices Used in Wind Turbine Generation Tower via Both Experiment and Numerical Simulation

Abstract

The wind turbine generation tower is built higher and more slender to obtain the greater wind velocity and the wind-induced vibration effects cannot be neglected. Tuned Liquid Damper (TLD), as one of the most common vibrating controls, is an effective and economic method to reduce the vibration of the slender tower. It is of great importance to study the performance of TLD device from experiment and numerical simulation. In this study, the experiment and numerical simulation based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) on circular TLD with different heights used in the wind turbine generation tower are conducted. First, TLD theories are reviewed and TLD dimensions are designed. Then, TLD for experiment (ST) and engineering (FT) with different heights are tested and the natural frequency and damping ratio of them are calculated. Lastly, the basic parameters including mesh size and time step size for numerical simulation on TLD are investigated. On this basis, the performance of TLD with different heights is simulated based on CFD and compared with theory and experiment. The results show that the natural frequency and damping ratio of TLD for experiment and engineering are similar. The optimal mesh size and time step size are 0.01\xa0m and 0.005\xa0s. The simulation method can accurately predict the natural frequency of TLD. This study extends the understanding of TLD for experiment and numerical simulation and provided useful guidelines to investigate the performance of TLD devices.