Stochastic Stability of Offshore Wind Turbine Blades Influenced by Rotationally Sampled Turbulence Perturbations

This study examines the stochastic stability of large, offshore wind turbine blades in the presence of flow turbulence. The problem is relevant to the design and reliability of future offshore wind energy structures. The formulation exploits a previously derived model to investigate mean square flutter stability. The formulation uses rotationally sampled turbulence to describe incoming flow perturbations. Although some assumptions are introduced in this preliminary study, the paper demonstrates the suitability of the proposed methodology; the solution is enabled via stochastic differential equations, numerically solved. A benchmark blade of a horizontal-axis offshore wind turbine is employed as the first application example.