Wind tunnel study on bidirectional vibration control of lattice towers with omnidirectional cantilever-type eddy current TMD

Abstract

An omnidirectional cantilever-type eddy current tuned mass damper (ECTMD) for lattice towers is introduced to suppress bidirectional vibration of lattice towers, in a form of a cantilever beam with a tip magnet mass. The damping of the ECTMD can be easily changed by tuning the amount of the current. A typhoon-fashion wind environment is simulated for the wind tunnel test. Test results show that there exists an optimal damping of the ECTMD along with an optimal frequency ratio. The scaled aeroelastic model is tested under various wind conditions, and a good effectiveness of ECTMD is observed. The wind directions, perpendicular and parallel to the cross-arm, are the most critical for the design of ECTMD, as the vibration mitigation in either of these two cases is relatively weaker. Finally, a simplified model is established for theoretical analysis in the frequency domain, whereby the variance responses of the tower with and without ECTMD are computed. The numerical results agree well with the experimental results, which corroborates the feasibility of using the proposed omnidirectional cantilever-type ECTMD in suppressing the vibrations of the tower in both along-wind and across-wind directions.