Abstract

Wind turbine tower (WTT) is a vital part of wind energy development, which gains huge momentum globally over the past decades. In this study, an ingenious solution is provided with the proposed performance-based design framework for the WTTs. To represent the performance of the wind projects, an intuitive variable, i.e., the expected lifetime profit, is considered as the performance index. The fragility functions were used to probabilistically incorporate the uncertainties from the characteristics of natural hazards, the structural capacity estimations, the variations in geometric irregularities of towers, etc. The lifetime profit were roughly estimated based on the structural performance associated with the existing economic data collected from the current WTT projects. Furthermore, with a hypothetical case study, this paper presents a solution to improve the structural performance using the proposed methodology. The influences of the initial costs as well as the operation and maintenance costs on the profit were also investigated. The final profit and the profit-operating time curves were provided, which are valuable references to the designers, the owners and the insurers of the wind farm projects.

摘要

风力涡轮机塔架（WTT）是风能发展的重要组成部分，在过去几十年中在全球范围内获得了巨大的发展势头。在这项研究中，为 WTT 提出的基于性能的设计框架提供了一个巧妙的解决方案。为了表示风电项目的绩效，一个直观的变量，即预期寿命利润，被认为是绩效指标。脆弱性函数用于概率性地结合来自自然灾害特征、结构能力估计、塔的几何不规则性变化等的不确定性。根据收集到的现有经济数据相关的结构性能粗略估计终生利润来自当前的 WTT 项目。此外，通过假设的案例研究，本文提出了一种使用所提出的方法来提高结构性能的解决方案。考察了初始成本和运维成本对利润的影响。提供了最终利润和利润运行时间曲线，对风电场项目的设计者、业主和保险人具有重要的参考价值。