Contribution of Small Wind Turbine Structural Vibration to Noise Emission

A major barrier to the acceptance of small wind turbines is that they are perceived to be noisy. This paper investigates an aspect of noise emission that has not been considered; vibration and noise generation from the tower. First, vibration measurements were made using accelerometers placed on the 10.2 m monopole tower of a Skystream 2.4 kW wind turbine, and natural frequencies and corresponding deflection shapes were calculated. Second, the results from the survey were used to verify the predictions of a finite element model of the tower structure. Lastly, the tower’s acoustic emission was simulated computationally, as it was not possible to measure it accurately. Most vibration energy occurred in the very low frequency band (≤10 Hz). It was found that wind itself can only excite the first two bending modes. On the other hand, emitted noise from the tower at large distances can be neglected, as close to the tower, the noise can reach 30 dB.