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Physics-based control-oriented modelling for floating offshore wind turbines

University of British Columbia

As offshore wind technology advances, floating wind turbines are becoming larger and moving further offshore, where wind is stronger and more consistent. Despite the increased potential for energy capture, wind turbines in these environments are susceptible to large platform motions, which in turn can lead to fatigue loading and shortened life, as well as harmful power fluctuations. To minimize these ill effects, it is possible to use advanced, multi-objective control schemes to minimize harmful motions, reject disturbances, and maximize power capture. Synthesis of such controllers requires simple but accurate models that reflect all of the pertinent dynamics of the system, while maintaining a reasonably low degree of complexity. In this thesis, we present a simplified, control-oriented model for floating offshore wind turbines that contains as many as six platform degrees of freedom, and two drivetrain degrees of freedom. The model is derived from first principles and, as such, can be manipulated by its real physical parameters while maintaining accuracy across the highly non-linear operating range of floating wind turbine systems. We validate the proposed model against advanced simulation software FAST, and show that it is extremely accurate at predicting major dynamics of the floating wind turbine system. Furthermore, the proposed model can be used to generate equilibrium points and linear state-space models at any operating point. Included in the linear model is the wave disturbance matrix, which can be used to accommodate for wave disturbance in advanced control schemes either through disturbance rejection or feedforward techniques. The linear model is compared to other available linear models and shows drastically improved accuracy, due to the presence of the wave disturbance matrix. Finally, using the linear model, we develop four different controllers of increasing complexity, including a multi-objective PID controller, an LQR controller, a disturbance-rejecting H∞ controller, and a feedforward H∞ controller. We show through simulation that the controllers that use the wave disturbance information reduce harmful motions and regulate power better than those that do not, and reinforce the notion that multi-objective control is necessary for the success of floating offshore wind turbines.

Text

2017-02-28

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/54891

Mechanical Engineering

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/