Proceedings of the Twentieth (2010) International Offshore and Polar Engineering Conference

Beijing, China, June 2025, 2010

Copyright © 2010 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1-880653-77-7 (Set); ISSN 1098-6189 (Set); www.isope.org

Damage Caused by Typhoon and Design of Wind Turbine Towers

Jing-Jong Jang and Ching-Wen Chien

Dept. of Harbor and River Engr., National Taiwan Ocean University.

Keelung, TAIWAN, China

ABSTRACT
Utilization of the wind energy has recently become quite popular in
Asia-Pacific area. In these countries of Asia-Pacific area have good
potential for wind-power development but are also prone to strong
typhoons. As the tubular shape of wind turbine tower (WTT) has a
large ratio of height (H) to least horizontal dimension (D) that makes it
a particularly more slender and wind-sensitive than any other
structures. The dynamic problem of WTT was analyzed in this article,
including calculation of dynamic characteristics, design methods of
fatigue, loading of structure and so on. Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
method and Frame Section Method (FSM) are used to compare the
natural period and mode shapes that simulate the response of wind
turbine tower. On the other hand, typical damage in Taiwan is blown
off the roofing system. Therefore, in this study we evaluated the safety
of typhoon-generated missile impact of the turbine blade in Taiwan. As
study results, the tip displacement is large than the one of shaft or
others component. On the other hand, the fluctuation intensity is equal
to 44% by typhoon Jangmi, therefore due to this circumstance the tower
is prone to pull out with buckling failure. The results of the analysis of
natural periods show that the FSM is closed to the FEA method.
However, the along-wind force at Typhoon Jangmi (typhoon speed,
U10=56m/s) is larger than the total wind force, which considered in the
along-wind force (basic design wind speed, U10=11.37m/s) with across-
wind force (lock-in wind speed, Ucr=15.6m/s) of the WTT. Therefore,
the typhoon wind speed should be considered in design of the WTTs to
compare the total-wind load effect.
Key words: Wind turbine tower, Finite Element Analysis, Wind-
resistant design, Missile impact.
INTRODUCTION
Most typhoons originate in the ocean east of the Philippines, and move
northwest toward Taiwan and then pass across Taiwan or turn northeast
to Japan or Korea. Therefore, Taiwan lies in the path of typhoons
during the period of July to September. Since lots of WTTs have been
recently constructed in Asia-Pacific area, and there aren’t so many
accumulated data of damage. Therefore, it is important to understand
how they collapsed or damaged under strong wind in detail, which
seems to lead to contribution toward structural design of WTT.
According to the investigations for typhoons, the authors introduced the
destruction modes of the WTTs, and establish the procedure of the
failure mechanism for the wind-resistant design (WRD). Some failures
of wind turbine tower in Japan and Taiwan (Chien and Jang, 2009) are
investigated to illustrate different physical phenomena and mechanical
behaviors subjected to typhoon strike in the actual local condition. The
blown off steel roofing, wind-bone debris, and blades of wind turbine
often missile impact the nearby houses and thus cause the secondary
damage. However, the WTT construction does not have the standard
design codes to follow up to. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to
present the procedure of WRD for wind turbine tower. On the other
hand, the predicted design wind loads (including shear forces and base
overturning moments) and wind-induced responses (including
deflections and accelerations) depend on the predicted natural
frequencies of vibration. In this paper studies the wind-inducing
response in the dynamic modes of a WTT by utilizing random vibration
theory and wind speed power spectrum analysis to obtain a more
consistent procedure for the equivalent static wind load method.
Davenport (1999) and Drybre and Hansen (1997) have developed
revised gust loading factor (GLF) concepts, which are based on the
response related to the influence function. Solaria (1982) based on the
gust factor approach; simple semi-empirical closed form solutions that
are amenable for practical use were developed for “point-like” and
“line-like” structures. Holmes (2001) presents a detailed treatment of
GLF for a range of applications. In the case of adequate stiffness of the
shell and stiff underground, the participation of the aforementioned
non-linearities and the soil-structure interaction into the total strain
state of the tower often is calculated less than 2%, thus not affecting the
overall structural response of the tower (Stathopoulos and
Baniotopoulos 2007). Therefore the design of the steel tower is based
on a detailed Finite Element analysis performed by applying
appropriately chosen linearly and geometrical laws. Numerical example
is based on the VESTA’s 660 Kw (1998) prototype to present the
efficacy of the proposed procedure in light of the traditional approach.
Therefore a benchmark model with FEM analysis is performed by
applying appropriately linearly elastic laws for the analysis of along-

651