The increasing world power demand combined with the need of environment protection and sustainable energy production, has led recently to the use of alternative means of energy production minimizing CO2 emissions including wind energy harvesting. The new trend to expand to offshore wind power installations in order to increase the amount of world sustainable energy production has led to the development of multiple structural solutions both for the foundations and the upper structure of wind power generators. Research on the structural optimization of wind turbine towers is of great interest and importance due to their high manufacturing and erection costs and certain transportation limitations that prevent them from reaching greater heights. The present work addresses the comparison of a classic tapered steel wind turbine tower configuration with a hybrid lattice tower of the same height and energy production potential. Aiming to contribute to better understanding of the structural behaviour of both types of wind turbine towers, the present research work focuses on the development of reliable numerical models along with the use of analytical equations in order to predict accurately and interpret the aforementioned structural response of the two tower configurations by conducting a comparative study between them.
Funding: This Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research andinnovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 747921.