• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.412-418
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• 2011

The scale of wind turbines has continuously increased over the last decade. Especially, the rapid growth of the rotor diameter has brought about the increase of the tower height and the load on the rotor blade, as can be seen in the case of a 5MW class wind turbine with 126m rotor diameter. This trend means the increasing possibility of system failure. In addition to that, it is impossible for human operators to stay and manage all the turbines in the case of a large-scale wind farm. For these reasons, the operation and maintenance technology is getting more importance. In this paper, we present an unmanned remote monitoring system for MW class wind turbines and its application to YeungHeung wind test bed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Intelligent Systems
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.351-360
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• 2016

Rapid population growth with high living standards and high electronics use for personal comfort has raised the electricity demand exponentially. To fulfill this elevated demand, conventional energy sources are shifting towards low production cost and long term usable alternative energy sources. Hybrid renewable energy systems (HRES) are becoming popular as stand-alone power systems for providing electricity in remote areas due to advancement in renewable energy technologies and subsequent rise in prices of petroleum products. Wind and solar power are considered feasible replacement to fossil fuels as the prediction of the fuel shortage in the near future, forced all operators involved in energy production to explore this new and clean source of power. Presented paper proposes fuzzy logic based Energy Management System (EMS) for Wind Turbine (WT), Photo Voltaic (PV) and Diesel Generator (DG) hybrid micro-grid configuration. Battery backup system is introduced for worst environmental conditions or high load demands. Dump load along with dump load controller is implemented for over voltage and over speed protection. Fuzzy logic based supervisory control system performs the power flow control between different scenarios such as battery charging, battery backup, dump load activation and DG backup in most intellectual way.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.435-449
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• 2020

To effectively extract the vast wind resource, offshore wind turbines are designed with large rotor and slender tower, which makes them vulnerable to external vibration sources such as wind and wave loads. Substantial research efforts have been devoted to mitigate the unwanted vibrations of offshore wind turbines to ensure their serviceability and safety in the normal working condition. However, most previous studies investigated the vibration control of wind turbines in one direction only, i.e., either the out-of-plane or in-plane direction. In reality, wind turbines inevitably vibrate in both directions when they are subjected to the external excitations. The studies on both the in-plane and out-of-plane vibration control of wind turbines are, however, scarce. In the present study, the NREL 5 MW wind turbine is taken as an example, a detailed three-dimensional (3D) Finite Element (FE) model of the wind turbine is developed in ABAQUS. To simultaneously control the in-plane and out-of-plane vibrations induced by the combined wind and wave loads, another carefully designed (i.e., tuned) spring and dashpot are added to the perpendicular direction of each Tuned Mass Damper (TMD) system that is used to control the vibrations of the tower and blades in one particular direction. With this simple modification, a bi-directional TMD system is formed and the vibrations in both the out-of-plane and in-plane directions are simultaneously suppressed. To examine the control effectiveness, the responses of the wind turbine without control, with separate TMD system and the proposed bi-directional TMD system are calculated and compared. Numerical results show that the bi-directional TMD system can simultaneously control the out-of-plane and in-plane vibrations of the wind turbine without changing too much of the conventional design of the control system. The bi-directional control system therefore could be a cost-effective solution to mitigate the bi-directional vibrations of offshore wind turbines.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.79-99
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• 2018

The effects of BPC (blade pitch control) on FOWT (floating offshore wind turbine) motions and generated power are investigated by using a fully-coupled turbine-floater-mooring simulation program. In this regard, two example FOWTs, OC4-5MW semi-submersible FOWT and KRISO four-3MW-units FOWT, are selected since the numerical simulations of those two FOWTs have been verified against experiments in authors' previous studies. Various simulations are performed changing BPC natural frequency (BPCNF), BPC damping ratio (BPCDR), and wind speeds. Through the numerical simulations, it was demonstrated that negative damping can happen for platform pitch motions and its influences are affected by BPCNF, BPCDR, and wind speeds. If BPCNF is significantly larger than platform-pitch natural frequency, the pitch resonance can be very serious due to the BPC-induced negative-damping effects, which should be avoided in the FOWT design. If wind speed is significantly higher than the rated wind velocity, the negative damping effects start to become reduced. Other important findings are also given through systematic sensitivity investigations.

• KIEE International Transaction on Electrical Machinery and Energy Conversion Systems
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• v.5B no.1
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• pp.78-83
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• 2005

Currently in Japan, the use of the small wind turbine is an upward trend. There are already many well established small wind turbine generators in use and their various failures have been reported. The most commonly sighted failure is blade damage. Thus the research purpose was set to develop a simple failure diagnostic system, where an Acoustic Emission (AE) signal was produced from the failure part of a blade which was measured by AE sensor. The failure diagnostic technique was thoroughly examined. Concurrently, the damage part of the blade was imitated, the AE signal was measured, and a FFT(Fast Fourier Transform) analysis was carried out, and was compared with the output characteristic. When one sheet of a blade was damaged 40mm or more, the level was computed at which failure could be diagnosed.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.221-243
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• 2015

This paper compares simplified and finite element method (FEM) models for tower and blade in dynamic coupled analysis of floating wind turbine. A SPAR type wind turbine with catenary mooring lines is considered in numerical analysis. Floating body equation is derived using boundary element method (BEM) and convolution. Equations for mooring line, tower and blade are formulated with theories of catenary, elastic beam and aerodynamic rotating beam, respectively and FEM is applied in the formulation. By combining the equations, coupled solutions are calculated. Tower or blade may be assumed rigid or lumped body for simplicity in modeling. By comparing floating body motions, mooring line tensions and tower stresses with the simple model and original FEM model, the effect of including or neglecting elastic, rotating and aerodynamic behavior of tower and blade is discussed.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.15-21
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• 2013

This study aims to estimate the fatigue resistance of small wind composite blade using the fatigue life estimation formula in the GL guideline. For this, firstly, we estimated a turbine blade's bending moment spectrum by using wind profile wind profile and BEMT. And fatigue tests were performed to obtain the S-N curve of composite materials used in blade. In addition, a finite element analysis was used to identify fatigue critical locations and fatigue stress spectrum. And the fatigue resistance of composite blade were evaluated using the rainflow cycle counting, and Goodman diagram and the fatigue life estimation formula in the GL guideline.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.311-328
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• 2017

The characteristics of boundary layers have significant effects on the aerodynamic forces and vibration of the wind turbine blade. The incorporation of active trailing edge flaps (ATEF) into wind turbine blades has been proven as an effective control approach for alleviation of load and vibration. This paper is aimed at investigating the effects of external trailing edge flaps on the flow pattern and velocity distribution within a boundary layer of a NREL 5MW reference wind turbine, as well as designing a new type of velocity sensors for future validation measurements. An aeroelastic-aerodynamic simulation with FAST-AeroDyn code was conducted on the entire wind turbine structure and the modifications were made on turbine blade sections with ATEF. The results of aeroelastic-aerodynamic simulations were combined with the results of two-dimensional computational fluid dynamic simulations. From these, the velocity profile of the boundary layer as well as the thickness variation with time under the influence of a simplified load case was calculated for four different blade-flap combinations (without flap, with $-5^{\circ}$, $0^{\circ}$, and $+5^{\circ}$ flap). In conjunction with the computational modeling of the characteristics of boundary layers, a bio-inspired hair flow sensor was designed for sensing the boundary flow field surrounding the turbine blades, which ultimately aims to provide real time data to design the control scheme of the flap structure. The sensor element design and performance were analyzed using both theoretical model and finite element method. A prototype sensor element with desired bio-mimicry responses was fabricated and validated, which will be further refined for integration with the turbine blade structures.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.253-265
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• 2014

The platform and floating structure of spar type offshore wind turbine systems should be designed in order for the 6-DOF motions to be minimized, considering diverse loading environments such as the ocean wave, wind, and current conditions. The objective of this study is to optimally design the platform and substructure of a 3MW spar type wind turbine system with the maximum postural stability in 6-DOF motions as well as the minimum material cost. Therefore, design variables of the platform and substructure were first determined and then optimized by a hydrodynamic analysis. For the hydrodynamic analysis, the body weight of the system was considered, and the ocean wave conditions were quantified to the wave forces using the Morison's equation. Moreover, the minimal number of computation analysis models was generated by the Design of Experiments (DOE), and the design variables of the platform and substructure were finally optimized by using a genetic algorithm with a neural network approximation.

• Advances in Computational Design
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.237-253
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• 2023

Torque ripple content and variable switching frequency operation of conventional direct torque control (DTC) are reduced by the integration of space vector modulation (SVM) into DTC. Integration of space vector modulation to conventional direct torque control known as SVM-DTC. It had been more frequently used method in renewable energy and machine drive systems. In this paper, SVM-DTC is used to control the rotor side converter (RSC) of a wind driven doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG) because of its advantages such as reduction of torque ripples and constant switching frequency operation. However, flux and torque ripples are still dominant due to distorted current waveforms at different operations of the wind turbine. Therefore, to smoothen the torque profile a Neural Network Controller (NNC) based SVM-DTC has been proposed by replacing the PI controller in the speed control loop of the wind turbine controller. Also, stability analysis and simulation study of DFIG using process reaction curve method (RRCM) are presented. Validation of simulation study in MATLAB/SIMULINK environment of proposed wind driven DFIG system has been performed by laboratory developed prototype model. The proposed NNC based SVM-DTC yields superior torque response and ripple reduction compared to other methods.