The typhoon-induced vibration characteristics of large wind turbines are significantly different in different travelling stages of typhoons due to the structural complexity of typhoons. Influences of multistage typhoon-induced effects on structural safety of wind turbines have not been studied yet. The objective of this paper is to investigate the vibration characteristics of wind turbines in different stages of the typhoon as well as the influencing rules of the structural design standards. For this purpose, a framework was established for predicting multi-stage typhoon-induced effects of large wind turbines, which includes a new typhoon-induced multi-stage wind field simulation method and an advanced multi-body model for large wind turbines. On this basis, aerodynamic loads and dynamic response of large wind turbines during different travelling stages of typhoon were analyzed systematically based on the blade element momentum, multi-body dynamic methods, spectral analysis and data statistics. The working mechanisms of multi-stage effects on vibration characteristics of the large wind turbine were revealed. Finally, an evaluation method of vibration amplification effects for large wind turbines with considerations to multi-stage effects was established. Research results demonstrate that the proposed method can predict vibration characteristics of large wind turbines considering the multi-stage effects efficiently. The multi-stage typhoon-induced effects can influence the value of peak factor and the extremum of wind-induced force and vibration responses of large wind turbines significantly. Conversely, the wind vibration coefficient of structural design was affected slightly. Instead of using a uniform structural design standard for large wind turbines, the influence rule of multi-stage effects on anti-typhoon safety performance was summarized in this paper. (C) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.