Offshore wind turbine (OWT) structures are highly sensitive to complex ambient excitations, especially extreme winds. To mitigate the vibrations of OWT structures under windstorm or typhoon conditions, a new eddy current with tuned mass damper (EC-TMD) system that combines the advantages of the eddy current damper and the tuned mass damper is proposed to install at the top of them. In the present study, the electromagnetic theory is applied to estimate the damping feature of the eddy current within the EC-TMD system. Then, the effectiveness of the EC-TMD system for vibration mitigation is demonstrated by small-scale tests. Furthermore, the EC-TMD system is used to alleviate structural vibrations of the OWT supported by composite bucket foundations (CBF) under extreme winds at the Xiangshui Wind Farm of China. It is found that the damping of the EC-TMD system can be ideally treated as having linear viscous damping characteristics, which are influenced by the gaps between the permanent magnets and the conductive materials as well as the permanent magnet layouts. Meanwhile, the RMS values of displacements of the OWT structure can be mitigated by 16% to 28%, and the acceleration can also be reduced significantly. Therefore, the excellent vibration-reducing performance of the EC-TMD system is confirmed, which provides meaningful guidance for application in the practical engineering of OWTs.

The dynamic impedances of foundation play an important role in the dynamic behavior and structural stability of offshore wind turbines (OWT). Though the behaviors of bucket foundation, which are considered as a relatively innovative foundation type under static loading, have been extensively investigated, the corresponding dynamic performances were neglected in previous research. This study focuses on the dynamic impedances of wide-shallow bucket foundations (WSBF) under the horizontal and rocking loads. Firstly, the numerical model was established to obtain the dynamic impedances of WSBF using the coupled finite-infinite element technique (FE-IFE). The crucial parameters affecting the dynamic responses of WSBF are investigated. It is shown that the skirt length mainly affects the rocking dynamic impedance and the diameter significantly affects the horizontal and coupling impedances, especially when the diameter is larger than 34 m. The overall dynamic responses of WSBF are profoundly affected by the relative soil thickness and the multi-layer soil stiffness. Additionally, dynamic impedances of WSBF are insensitive to the homogeneous soil stiffness. Lastly, the safety threshold curve was calculated according to the OWT, which can provide essential reference for the design of the OWT supported by large scale WSBF.

Stochastic dynamic analysis of an offshore wind turbine (OWT) structure plays an important role in the structural safety evaluation and reliability assessment of the structure. In this paper, the OWT structure is simplified as a linear single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) system and the corresponding joint probability density function (PDF) of the dynamic response is calculated by the implementation of the path integration (PI) method. Filtered Gaussian white noise, which is obtained from the utilization of a second-order filter, is considered as horizontal wind excitation and used to excite the SDOF system. Thus, the SDOF model and the second-order linear filter model constitute a four-dimensional dynamic system. Further, a detailed three-dimensional finite element model is applied to obtain the natural frequency of the OWT and the efficient PI method, which is modified based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) convolution method, is also utilized to reduce the execution time to obtain the PDF of the response. Two important parameters of wind conditions, i.e., horizontal mean wind speed and turbulence standard deviation, are investigated to highlight the influences on the PDF of the dynamic response and the reliability of the OWT.

Low-temperature discharged water from thermally-stratified reservoirs in spring and summer will have a negative environmental impact on fish breeding and agricultural irrigation downstream. The temperature-control curtain (TCC) is a selective withdrawal structure that can effectively change the discharged water temperature. Compared with a traditional selective withdrawal project, a TCC project has the advantages of low cost and simple construction and can even be added to operating reservoirs without impacting power generation. Analysis of the load characteristics is the key to the application of TCC engineering. This paper establishes a three-dimensional numerical model simulation and verifies it with physical model experimental results. The crucial parameters affecting the load characteristics of TCC are investigated, including the water blocking rate, area ratio, inclination ratio, inflow velocity, and water temperature stratification ratio. The results show that: (1) This numerical simulation approach can be used to predict the drag coefficient and the load of a TCC; (2) the water blocking rate has the greatest influence on the drag coefficient, and it is the most critical indicator of the TCC load; and (3) the drag coefficient exponentially increases with an increasing water blocking rate, quadratically increases with an increasing area ratio, linearly increases with an increasing inclination ratio, and linearly increases with an increasing water temperature stratification ratio.