Seismic Behavior of Wind Turbines

Ian Prowell (Graduate Student) Ahmed Elgamal (Professor) University of California, San Diego Professor of Structural Engineering elgamal@ucsd.edu
Industry Partners: Hal Romanowitz & Ed Duggan Oak Creek Energy Systems, Tahachapi, CA

May 10, 2010

California Seismic Map (from USGS)

Wind Turbines in California may be located in Seismically Active Regions

http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.d o?AwardNumber=0830422 Research Sponsored by US National Science Foundation (Dr. Joy Pauschke, Program Manager)

Shake Table Seismic Research PIs at UCSD Prof. Ahmed Elgamal Prof. Chia-Ming Uang Prof. Enrique Luco Prof. Joel Conte
Wind Turbine donated by: Oak Creek Energy Systems (Hal Romanowitz and Ed Duggan)

http://www.oces.com Wind turbine Test on the outdoor University of California, San Diego, George E Brown Jr. Network for Earthquake Engineering Research NEES Shake-Table (http://nees.ucsd.edu)

Photography by Alan Decker. Courtesy of UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. 2004 Copyright UCSD Publications Office. All rights reserved.

Acknowledgements & Organizations

Organizations
NSF - Grant No. CMMI 0830422 (Dr. Joy Pauschke) Oak Creek Energy Systems (Mr. Hal Romanowitz, Mr. Ed Duggan, Mr. M. Burns, Mr. V. Johnson) NEES@UCSD & NEES@UCLA (Prof. J.E. Luco and Dr. R. Nigbor) Sandia National Laboratories (Dr. P. Veers) NREL (Dr. J. Jonkman)

People
Prof. C.-M. Uang, Prof. J.P. Conte, Prof. J. Restrepo, Ms. Jennie Lee, Mr. V. Diep, Dr. J. Lu, Dr. Z. Zhen, Mr. A. Gunthardt, Mr. D. Radulescu, Mr. A. Sherman, Mr. L. Rodriguez, Mr. M. Tyson, Mr. R. Whalen, Mr. D. Mckay, Mr. R. Beckley (UCSD), Mr. Marc Veletsoz (Merrimack College), Dr. A. Salamanca, Mr. R. Kang, Mr. B. Ferrero, Mr. S. Keowen (UCLA), Prof. B. Moaveni (Tufts), Dr. X. He (AECOM Transportation), Dr. P. Wilson (Earth Mechanics), Dr. M. Fraser (NAVFAC, San Diego), Prof. R. Rolfes (Leibniz University, Hannover, Germany), Prof. J. Lynch, Dr. A. Zimmerman (Univ. of Michigan), and many others.

On-Site Dynamic Behavior

NSF NEES@UCLA
Mobile Testing Laboratory High quality accelerometers & data acquisition system Frequency range: 0-200 Hz Dynamic range: 155 dB Resolution: 10-8 g

On-site Measurement of Dynamic Response During Operation (NEES@UCLA)

Testing at Oak Creek Energy Systems, Tahachapi, CA

Testing at Oak Creek Energy Systems, Tahachapi, CA

900 kW Blade
8 accelerometers along the blade Oriented for flap and edge bending

Testing at Oak Creek Energy Systems, Tahachapi, CA

900 kW NEG Micon

2 hours of data while operating 46 hours of parked data Tower and surrounding soil instrumented Forced vibration up to 15 Hz Data recorded while rotor and gearbox were removed Wind speed and operational data recorded simultaneously with vibration data

Testing at Oak Creek Energy Systems, Tahachapi, CA

1.5 MW NEG Micon

45 hours of data while operating 1 hour of parked data Tower and surrounding soil instrumented Wind speed and operational data recorded simultaneously with vibration data

Sample Data from In-situ testing

Frequency domain representation of data

900 kW turbine Frequency = 0.55 Hz

900 kW turbine Frequency = 0.56 Hz

900 kW turbine Frequency = 3.95 Hz

900 kW turbine Frequency= 3.96 Hz

900 kW Turbine Frequency = 11 Hz

Data Analysis Sample Results

10 minutes of data Fore-aft Parked 0.55 Hz 2.1% Damping

Shake Table Testing at UCSD

Outdoor Shake Table Testing -UCSD NSF NEES Englekirk Structural Engineering Center
The only facility in the world capable of testing a full scale wind turbine
Shake Table data to document and analyze non-linear earthquake response

Sky is the limit!

2010 Shake Table Testing Program

Wide variety of input motions - included near and far field earthquakes
Multiple scale factors

Band limited white noise (0.25 25.0 Hz) excitation to monitor variation in turbine characteristics

2010 Shake Table Test

Over 90 Shaking Events Input motions in two perpendicular orientations relative to nacelle

Input motions in operational and parked conditions Impact tests to characterize blades

Preliminary study: Observed Mode Shapes (black) and Calibrated Simple FE Model Results (red) (1st lateral, 1st longitudinal and 2nd lateral respectively).

Computer model Calibration: Comparison between recorded and computed acceleration

Accel. (g) Accel. (g)

1940 El Centro 180

0.5 0 -0.5 10 0 -1 0

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

0.5% Damped 5.0% Damped

45

50

10

15

Accel. (g) Accel. (g)

20 25 30 35 1979 Coyote Lake 230

40

45

50

0.5 0 -0.5 10 0 -1 0

10

15

20

25

Accel. (g) Accel. (g)

10 15 1986 Palm Springs 0

20

25

0.5 0 -0.5 10 0 -1 0

10

20

30

40

50

10

20

Accel. (g) Accel. (g)

30 2000 Yountville 90

40

50

0.5 0 -0.5 10 0 -1 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

10

20

30 40 Time (seconds)

50

60

70

Numerical Modeling -- FAST (NREL)

Maintained by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL, Dr. Jason Jonkman)
Free and open Used extensively by wind researchers

Certified by Germanischer Lloyd for calculating turbine design loads Simulates two and three bladed horizontal-axis wind turbine
Wind field, rotation, gearbox, generator, control system, blade pitch

Multi-modal solution

Numerical Modeling FAST

FAST was updated at UCSD to simulate base shaking

Input time histories as displacement, velocity, or acceleration

Assumes fixed base 3 translational axis for loading (2 Horizontal and 1 Vertical)

Numerical Modeling: Base moment demand Comparison

Side-side Moment Demand

Fore-aft Moment Demand

Small Wind & Outreach

Seismic Shake-Table Testing

Jennie Lee Vinh Diep

UCSD Undergraduate students

Elementary school students visiting the UCSD live shake table experimental facility http://webshaker.ucsd.edu

Research on Wind Turbine Foundations and Soil-Structure Interaction

3-D Finite Element Analysis of Monopile Wind Turbine Foundations http://cyclic.ucsd.edu/openseespl (using UC Berkeley OpenSees http://opensees.berkeley.edu )

UCSD new NSF Grant, PIs, Q. Zhu and A. Elgamal

Conceptual designs of mooring systems of floating wind turbines (from Jonkman and Buhl 2007): (left) spar buoy, (middle) TLP, (right) barge.

Control of Bolt Torque at joints

Potential Future Research: UCSD operating wind turbine (Live Lab) for Health Monitoring Research

Potential Future Research

Tomorrow (> 55 m height)

Thank you!
Ahmed Elgamal elgamal@ucsd.edu

Today (23 m height)