Reliability design for tower structure of wind turbine conceptual design

ZHANG Ren-jie1， SHEN Qing-qing2， LUO Wan-xing2
（1. College of Biological and Environmental Engineering， Zhejiang University of Technology， Hangzhou 310014， China；  2. College of Mechanical Engineering， Zhejiang University of Technology， Hangzhou 310014， China）

Abstract： In order to solve the problems of a long development cycle，various potential pitfalls，bad risk and high cost，the reliability of the wind turbine tower concept design was investigated. At the conceptual design stage，probability theory calculation method was presented to get the tower's reliability mathematics model. During the stage，the tower's load was analysed and failure models were determined for parameter optimization. To minimize the wind machine tower frame's total volume and installed cost，the 1.5 MW wind turbine’s tower was evaluated on the reliability-based optimization design model of the tower. The experimental results show that，taking the reliability design optimization method，on one hand，in guarantee that strength，stiffness and stability basic not affected，the thickness of the wind turbine tower is reduced，thus the total volume of the wind turbine tower is reduced，the cost of the wind turbine tower in certain scope is reduced. On the other hand，the wind turbine tower cost is reduced with the increase of tower end outer diameter.
Key words： wind turbine tower structure； reliability design； concept design