The dutch government plans to build a vast amount of offshore wind turbines. Therefore, it will be necessary to decrease the costs of the transportation, installation and maintenance of these wind turbines. Jules Dock tries to achieve this by replacing the steel design of the next generation 10MW wind turbine tower by a flexible composite design.
Damping is an important parameter of flexible structures, therefore a research thesis has been set up to determine the damping properties of the composite tower. In order to determine the material damping of the tower, DMA measurements have been conducted and a viscoelastic damping model has been created. According to this model, the damping loss factors are approximately 71% higher than the damping loss factors of a steel tower with the same dimensions, which results in an increase of the fatigue life. Also the tower’s material damping can be considered temperature and frequency independent.