Aeroelastic Flutter Oscilations of Distributed Systems

Abstract

Vertical bladeless wind turbine looks like a huge baseball bat fixed on a handle and swaying in the wind. The vortices are created in this flow at the back of the body and periodically are separated from either side of the body. This effect is called Von Kármán vortex street. It is destructive for civil structures. The Vortex Bladeless engineers decided to make use of this destructive effect. Vertical bladeless wind turbine starts to oscillate at the lower speeds of the wind. It is possible to locate stations much closer to each other. The turbines of the classical design with a dense arrangement do not receive enough wind flow, but this bladeless generator only benefits from a dense placement as its oscillatory effect is amplified by the vortices from the generators ahead. Also, it produces almost no harmful noise, it is safe for birds and doesn't close the horizon. The reasons and the set of parameters leading to aeroelastic flutter oscillations in distributed systems (DS) are investigated. The instability is caused by the combined influence of three factors: the disturbances drift along the DS in the flow, the bending stiffness, and the influence of an inertial force, which is a distributed load moving along the DS. The described mathematical concept and numerical algorithm, as well as the achieved results can be used to design and optimize the bladeless wind turbines operation modes.