Tower Nodding & Naying Control of Horizontal-axis Wind Turbine
Backgroud:
Wind energy is growing fast. Many new wind turbines are installed all over the world with increasing dimensions, currently up to 126 meter rotor diameter and masses of several hundreds of tonnes. New components are required in the development of new wind turbine types and sizes. The turbine development service offered to customers by the product group Wind Energy Turbine Design of MECAL fulfils this demand, through design and analysis of complete wind turbines and their components. MECAL’s Wind Turbine Design has a wide experience in the design, assessment and certification of wind turbine components. Load simulations and turbine controller design are an important part of the list of services.
The main task of the wind turbine control system is to obtain continuous power production under all operating conditions. However with increasing wind turbine size and power output, fatigue and ultimate loads increase significantly, which have become limitations in the wind turbine design process. So the objective of the wind turbine control is not only to enhance the power production, but also to mitigate these loads.
The tower of a wind turbine experiences such loads due to the turbulent nature of the wind. These loads occur in Fore-aft (Nodding) direction as well as Side-to-Side (Naying) direction of the turbine. During this project it will be investigated how to dynamically increase the damping on the tower Nodding and Naying directions to achieve an optimal control that reduces the loads on the turbine structure.
Purpose:
The goal of this thesis is to design an optimal control strategy, which will not only obtain continuous power under all operating conditions, but also mitigate the loads on the tower in both Nodding and Naying directions.
Outline:
The research topic mainly focuses on the following steps:
- Literature survey.
- Modeling the Wind Turbine.
- Control strategy development.
- Simulation Study.
- Evaluation and documentation
Your study; a master in Control Systems Engineering. Knowledge of Matlab/Simulink is required. You will work amongst a team of engineers that can benefit from your contribution. Some of these engineers will be involved in this project for assistance and feedback.
Type of project:
Final thesis, Master level.
Coordinator / for more information on the subject:
Ir. Vamsi Velpula, Project engineer, +31 (53) 4821 428, v.velpula@mecal.eu
Product group and location:
Wind Energy, Product Development, Enschede
To apply for the project:
Mr Dick van Haare, Recruitment, +31 (53) 4821 400, d.vanhaare@mecal.eu