Vibration Control of a Nonuniform Wind Turbine Tower via Disturbance Observer

In this paper, the vibration control problem is studied for a wind turbine tower subjected to random wind loads. The tower is modeled as a nonuniform Euler-Bernoulli beam system with distributed parameters by using the Hamilton's principle. The control force is applied at the top boundary of the tower to suppress the vibrations of the tower. Disturbance observer is designed to attenuate the disturbance at the top of the tower. The stability of the whole system is rigorously proved via the Lyapunov analysis and the satisfactory control performance is guaranteed under the proper choice of the design parameters. Numerical results are provided to illustrate that the designed controller is effective in dissipating the vibrations of the tower.