Stochastic Analysis of Short-Term Structural Responses and Fatigue Damages of A Submerged Tension Leg Platform Wind Turbine in Wind and Waves

In connection with the design of floating wind turbines,stochastic dynamic analysis is a critical task considering nonlinear wind and wave forces.To study the random structural responses of a newly designed submerged tension leg platform(STLP)wind turbine,a set of dynamic simulations and comparison analysis with the MIT/NREL TLP wind turbine are carried out.The signal filter method is used to evaluate the mean and standard deviations of the structural response.Furthermore,the extreme responses are estimated by using the mean upcrossing rate method.The fatigue damages for blade root,tower,and mooring line are also studied according to the simulated time-series.The results and comparison analysis show that the STLP gives small surge and pitch motions and mooring line tensions in operational sea states due to the small water-plane area.Additionally,in severe sea states,the STLP gives lower extreme values of platform pitch,slightly larger surge and heave motions and better towerbase and mooring line fatigue performances than those of the MIT/NREL TLP.It is found that the STLP wind turbine has good performances in structural responses and could be a potential type for exploiting the wind resources located in deep waters.

A CONFUSION IN THE APPLICATION OF DISTORTION ENERGY THEORY TO MULTIAXIAL FATIGUE FAILURE PREDICTION

In the application of distortion energy theory to multiaxial fatigue prediction problems,it isquite frequent to meet with a confusion in the evaluation of the extremum values of equivalentstresses.In this paper,a description about this error is presented and discussed thereafter.Neces-sary correction has been made towards this problem.

Multi-Excitation Fatigue Testing for Large Full-Scale Wind Turbine Blade

In order to solve the problem of insufficient exciting force of equipment for large full-scale wind turbine blade fatigue testing,the influence of gravity on the performance of excitation equipment and fatigue damage evaluation of the different positions of wind turbine blades are analyzed.With the multi-excitation loading in the horizontal direction,the actuator force of the excitation equipment does not need to overcome the gravity of the dynamic mass,which directly outputs the exciting force of the system vibration.The excitation efficiency of the equipment is 77%higher than that of the vertical load.The gravity moment of the horizontal loading mode is perpendicular to the loading direction.That is,the mean load in the flapwise direction is zero.The weight of excitation equipment could replace the tuning mass on the condition that the self-weight of equipment is reduced by the multi-excitation mode,which helps the excitation equipment play the comprehensive function of excitation equipment and tuning mass.At the same time,the gravity moment in the edgewise direction will be decreased by 17.0%22.5%under the multi-excitation horizontal loading mode.In the vertical loading mode,the gravity moment is the mean load,which only increases fatigue damage accumulation by 15.6%.By comparing the role of gravity in the excitation equipment and fatigue damage evaluation,the multi-excitation horizontal loading mode has more advantage to performance the exciting force than the contribution of gravity to the fatigue damage accumulation in the vertical loading mode.Through the fatigue testing of multi-excitation horizontal loading,the potential of excitation equipment is explored,and the problem of insufficient exciting force in large full-scale wind turbine blade fatigue testing will be solved.

FATIGUE RELIABILITY DESIGN AND ESTIMATION METHOD FOR VARIABLE LOADING

A method is presented for estimating fatigue reliability under variable loading, which isbased on load cycles-fatigue life interference theory as well as cumulative fatigue damageanalysis. The basic opinion is that for variable loading the increment of failure probability pro-duced by each load cycle is determined by the stress level as well as the damage state at whichthis load cycle applies Contrast to 'conditional reliability-equivalent life methodology'. this meth-od calculates the equivalent cycle numbers between different stress levels according to cumulativefatigue damage rule but not equivalent failure probability.

Simplification approaches for multi-level load spectra by using equivalent damage rule

Reasonable and effective fatigue load spectrum is key of aircraft structural fatigue test.Two kinds of load spectra simplification approaches based on statistical consistent fatigue damage model are proposed in the paper.One method is to simplify the original multi-level load spectra to spectral load with fewer level and was verified by the experimental data of five levels and seven levels load spectra.The equivalent damage here is not equivalent fatigue life,but equivalent number of spectral blocks.Moreover,it was proved that a section of low stress load cannot be converted into the highest stress load considering equivalent damage.The other is to convert the life distribution under multi-level load spectra into that of constant amplitude spectrum according to a certain principle,that is,equivalent damage is achieved through equivalent fatigue life,and two groups of three levels spectral data were used for experimental verification.The results show that equivalent damage simplification approach of multi-level load spectra is feasible,and it achieve that the damage of one loading block before and after the simplification is equal in probability statistics.The life distribution of load simplified as constant amplitude spectrum is consistent with test data.The simplification method presented in this paper can be generalized and is a predictive engineering method which does not depend on experimental data.