Active Fault Tolerant Control of a Wind Farm System

In order to enhance the 'sustainability’ of offshore wind farms, thus skipping unplanned maintenance operations and costs, that can be important for offshore systems, the earlier management of faults represents the key point. Therefore, this work studies the development of an adaptive sustainable control scheme with application to a wind farm benchmark consisting of nine wind turbine systems. They are described via their nonlinear models, as well as the wind and wake effects among the wind turbines of the wind park. The fault tolerant control strategy uses the recursive estimation of the faults provided by nonlinear estimators designed via a nonlinear differential algebraic tool. This aspect of the study, together with the more straightforward solution based on a data-driven scheme, is the key issue when on-line applications are proposed for a viable implementation of the proposed solutions

Active actuator fault-tolerant control of a wind turbine benchmark model

This paper describes the design of an active fault-tolerant control scheme that is applied to the actuator of a wind turbine benchmark. The methodology is based on adaptive filters obtained via the nonlinear geometric approach, which allows to obtain interesting decoupling property with respect to uncertainty affecting the wind turbine system. The controller accommodation scheme exploits the on-line estimate of the actuator fault signal generated by the adaptive filters. The nonlinearity of the wind turbine model is described by the mapping to the power conversion ratio from tip-speed ratio and blade pitch angles. This mapping represents the aerodynamic uncertainty, and usually is not known in analytical form, but in general represented by approximated two-dimensional maps (i.e. look-up tables). Therefore, this paper suggests a scheme to estimate this power conversion ratio in an analytical form by means of a two-dimensional polynomial, which is subsequently used for designing the active fault-tolerant control scheme. The wind turbine power generating unit of a grid is considered as a benchmark to show the design procedure, including the aspects of the nonlinear disturbance decoupling method, as well as the viability of the proposed approach. Extensive simulations of the benchmark process are practical tools for assessing experimentally the features of the developed actuator fault-tolerant control scheme, in the presence of modelling and measurement errors. Comparisons with different fault-tolerant schemes serve to highlight the advantages and drawbacks of the proposed methodology

Nonlinear system identification for model-based condition monitoring of wind turbines

This paper proposes a data driven model-based condition monitoring scheme that is applied to wind turbines. The scheme is based upon a non-linear data-based modelling approach in which the model parameters vary as functions of the system variables. The model structure and parameters are identified directly from the input and output data of the process. The proposed method is demonstrated with data obtained from a simulation of a grid-connected wind turbine where it is used to detect grid and power electronic faults. The method is evaluated further with SCADA data obtained from an operational wind farm where it is employed to identify gearbox and generator faults. In contrast to artificial intelligence methods, such as artificial neural network-based models, the method employed in this paper provides a parametrically efficient representation of non-linear processes. Consequently, it is relatively straightforward to implement the proposed model-based method on-line using a field-programmable gate array

Failure Prognosis of Wind Turbine Components

Wind energy is playing an increasingly significant role in the World\u27s energy supply mix. In North America, many utility-scale wind turbines are approaching, or are beyond the half-way point of their originally anticipated lifespan. Accurate estimation of the times to failure of major turbine components can provide wind farm owners insight into how to optimize the life and value of their farm assets. This dissertation deals with fault detection and failure prognosis of critical wind turbine sub-assemblies, including generators, blades, and bearings based on data-driven approaches. The main aim of the data-driven methods is to utilize measurement data from the system and forecast the Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of faulty components accurately and efficiently. The main contributions of this dissertation are in the application of ALTA lifetime analysis to help illustrate a possible relationship between varying loads and generators reliability, a wavelet-based Probability Density Function (PDF) to effectively detecting incipient wind turbine blade failure, an adaptive Bayesian algorithm for modeling the uncertainty inherent in the bearings RUL prediction horizon, and a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) for characterizing the bearing damage progression based on varying operating states to mimic a real condition in which wind turbines operate and to recognize that the damage progression is a function of the stress applied to each component using data from historical failures across three different Canadian wind farms

Condition Monitoring of Wind Turbines Using Intelligent Machine Learning Techniques

Wind Turbine condition monitoring can detect anomalies in turbine performance which have the potential to result in unexpected failure and financial loss. This study examines common Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) data over a period of 20 months for 21 pitch regulated 2.3 MW turbines and is presented in three manuscripts. First, power curve monitoring is targeted applying various types of Artificial Neural Networks to increase modeling accuracy. It is shown how the proposed method can significantly improve network reliability compared with existing models. Then, an advance technique is utilized to create a smoother dataset for network training followed by establishing dynamic ANFIS network. At this stage, designed network aims to predict power generation in future hours. Finally, a recursive principal component analysis is performed to extract significant features to be used as input parameters of the network. A novel fusion technique is then employed to build an advanced model to make predictions of turbines performance with favorably low errors

Wind Turbine Reliability Improvement by Fault Tolerant Control

This thesis investigates wind turbine reliability improvement, utilizing model-based fault tolerant control, so that the wind turbine continues to operate satisfactorily with the same performance index in the presence of faults as in fault-free situations. Numerical simulations are conducted on the wind turbine bench mark model associated with the considered faults and comparison is made between the performance of the proposed controllers and industrial controllers illustrating the superiority of the proposed ones

Determining structural performance

An overview of the methods and concepts developed to enhance and predict structural dynamic characteristics of advanced aeropropulsion systems is presented. Aeroelasticity, vibration control, dynamic systems, and computational structural methods are four disciplines that make up the structural dynamic effort at LeRC. The aeroelasticity program develops analytical and experimental methods for minimizing flutter and forced vibration of aerospace propulsion systems. Both frequency domain and time domain methods were developed for applications on the turbofan, turbopump, and advanced turboprop. In order to improve life and performance, the vibration control program conceives, analyzes, develops, and demonstrates new methods for controlling vibrations in aerospace systems. Active and passive vibration control is accomplished with electromagnetic dampers, magnetic bearings, and piezoelectric crystals to control rotor vibrations. The dynamic systems program analyzes and verifies the dynamics of interacting systems, as well as develops concepts and methods for high-temperature dynamic seals. Work in this field involves the analysis and parametric identification of large, nonlinear, damped, stochastic systems. The computational structural methods program exploits modern computer science as an aid to the solutions of structural problems

Computational Modeling of Gurney Flaps and Microtabs by POD Method

Gurney flaps (GFs) and microtabs (MTs) are two of the most frequently used passive flow control devices on wind turbines. They are small tabs situated close to the airfoil trailing edge and normal to the surface. A study to find the most favorable dimension and position to improve the aerodynamic performance of an airfoil is presented herein. Firstly, a parametric study of a GF on a S810 airfoil and an MT on a DU91(2)250 airfoil was carried out. To that end, 2D computational fluid dynamic simulations were performed at Re = 10(6) based on the airfoil chord length and using RANS equations. The GF and MT design parameters resulting from the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations allowed the sizing of these passive flow control devices based on the airfoil's aerodynamic performance. In both types of flow control devices, the results showed an increase in the lift-to-drag ratio for all angles of attack studied in the current work. Secondly, from the data obtained by means of CFD simulations, a regular function using the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) was used to build a reduced order method. In both flow control cases (GFs and MTs), the recursive POD method was able to accurately and very quickly reproduce the computational results with very low computational cost.The current research was partially supported by the Spanish Government with the Project: grant number: MTM2015-64577-C2-1-R

Fault tolerant control for wind turbine pitch actuators

This paper develops a fault detection and isolation (FDI) and active fault tolerant control (FTC) of pitch actuators in wind turbines (WTs). This is accomplished combining a disturbance compensator with a controller, both of which are formulated in the discrete-time domain. The disturbance compensator has a dual purpose: to reconstruct the actuator fault (which is used by the FDI technique) and to design the discrete-time controller to obtain an active FTC. That is, the actuator faults are reconstructed and then the control inputs are modified with the reconstructed fault signal to achieve a FTC in the presence of actuator faults with a comparable behavior to the fault-free case. The proposed techniques are validated using the aeroelastic wind turbine simulator FAST. This software is designed by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory and is widely used for studying wind turbine control systems.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version