Out-of-plane vibration mitigation of wind turbine blade using highly efficient nonlinear energy sink

Nowadays, the use of wind as one of the main sources of low carbon and renewable energy is expanding rapidly all around the world. Recently, with the development of wind farms and the consequent increase in the size of wind turbines, their maintenance has become more difficult. Therefore, researchers have deeply focused on the analysis and the control of their vibration. In this study, a wind turbine blade with a type of nonlinear absorber, called highly efficient nonlinear energy sink is analyzed, and the interaction between the heavy and long blade and the nonlinear energy sink (NES), under the influence of gravity in the vertical plane and wind force varying periodically due to height dependence is examined. For this purpose, the equations of motion for the blade connected to the NES are extracted using the energy method and solved numerically. Finally, the sensitivity of the parameters affecting the performance of the NES is analyzed and the performance of the system under rotation of the standalone blade and also the rotation of the blade in the presence of the optimal NES is studied.