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The effectiveness of alternative stiffening types of the cutout provided near the base of tubular steel wind turbine towers is assessed, taking into account the dynamic nature of wind loading. To that effect, artificial wind load time histories are first obtained using the public domain aero-elastic code FAST. Finite element models that have been previously validated by means of comparison with experimental results, are then used to carry out fully nonlinear dynamic analyses and compare strength and overall structural performance.

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As wind turbine towers grow in height and their blades become longer, actions on the towers are also increased and their safe and cost‐effective design becomes critical for the further development of the wind energy sector. One potential failure mechanism of tubular steel towers is shell local buckling between ring flanges. In the present paper, the buckling behavior of a 120m tall wind turbine tower under realistic wind loads is investigated numerically, focusing on the buckling response near the man‐hole opening. To that effect, nonlinear finite element analyses accounting for geometrical and material nonlinearity and imperfections (GMNIA) is employed. GMNIA is performed taking into account initial geometric imperfections with the most unfavorable shapes resulting from the three primary buckling modes, determining the imperfection size according to EN1993‐1‐6 depending on the assumed fabrication quality class A, B or C. Numerical results are compared to analytical verification according to EN1993‐1‐6. Different wind directions are considered. Moreover, to investigate the influence of the stiffening of the manhole to the tower buckling strength, a comparison between three alternatives of stiffened and an unstiffened manhole is performed.