Turbulence Loads on the Howden 26-m-Diameter Wind Turbine

Conducted in Palm Springs, Calif., a joint effort between SERI and James Howden and Company involved a comprehensive test program on the 330-kW Howden wind turbine with a three-bladed, fixed-hub rotor 26 m in diameter. Part of the measurement analysis is to quantify the turbulence loads during the steady-state production modes of operation. Assuming wind turbulence to be the cause of the randomloads, the turbulence loads in terms of blade root-bending moments have been determined empirically by isolating the random or nonperiodic part of the load signals using azimuthal averaging. Standard deviations as functions of wind speed, as well as power spectra of. the loads, are presented. The measured turbulence loads are compared to a recently developed model for turbulence loading of windturbines. The model works in the frequency domain and uses the standard engineering representation of turbulence in terms of a coherence function and a wind-power spectrum at a fixed point in space. The turbulence load model accounts for the dominant mode of vibration for the load in question and is intended to be simple enough to be used for a preliminary load estimate for practical designpurposes.