Tuned Vibration Absorber for Wind Turbine Tower Deflection Mitigation Adopting Nonlinear Optimal Control Technique – Experimental Tests

The paper concerns a scaled wind turbine tower-nacelle model equipped with a tuned vibration absorber (TVA) utilising a magnetorheological (MR) damper and a small-scale servomotor, so forming a hybrid MR-TVA (H-MR-TVA). The nonlinear optimal-based control technique with a recently introduced nacelle acceleration quality term is adopted for tower deflection mitigation. The laboratory test rig of the regarded model is used for experimental tests. The study confirms that the H-MR-TVA utilisation guarantees up to 3-fold lower tower deflection amplitude than the passive TVA and up to 10-fold lower than the TVA locked. However, the H-MR-TVA uses 53% more working space than the passive TVA. The maximum actuator power is a fraction of a watt for the regarded solutions.