Investigation into full-scale offshore wind turbine vibrations

In this project we aim at studying and separating the damping contributions influencing the vibrations of Offshore Wind Turbines (OWTs). To this end, we generate a database of modal parameters extracted from a fleet of OWTs manufactured by Siemens-Gamesa and perform data analysis techniques to associate damping to different environmental and operational parameters. In parallel, we also examine at the influence of environmental and operational conditions in the onset of wind induced vibrations and extreme vibrations in general.

Damping is a key property of structures which determines among other things, the rate of fatigue accumulation -and thus the lifetime- of a structure. In this project, we aim at obtaining estimates and minimal uncertainty intervals for damping, which can be used by wind turbine manufacturers to validate and improve their own fatigue life calculations.