scholarly journals Analysis of the Effect of a Series of Back Twist Blade Configurations for an Active Pitch-To-Stall Floating Offshore Wind Turbine

2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Ward ◽  
Maurizio Collu ◽  
Joy Sumner

Abstract For a turbine mounted on a floating platform, extreme induced loads can be increased by up to 1.6 times those experienced by a turbine situated on a fixed base. If these loads cannot be reduced, towers must be strengthened which will result in increased costs and weight. These tower loads would be additionally exasperated for a pitch-to-feather controlled turbine by a phenomenon generally referred to as “negative damping,” if it were not avoided. Preventing negative damping from occurring on a pitch-to-feather controlled floating platform negatively affects rotor speed control and regulated power performance. However, minimizing the blade bending moment response can result in a reduction in the tower fore-aft moment response, which can increase the tower life. A variable-speed, variable pitch-to-stall (VSVP-S) floating semi-submersible wind turbine, which does not suffer from the negative damping and hence provides a more regulated power output, is presented. This incorporates a back twist blade profile such that the blade twist, starting at the root, initially twists toward stall and, at some pre-determined “initiation” point, changes direction to twist back toward feather until the tip. Wind frequency weighting was applied to the tower axial fatigue life trends of different blade profiles and a preferred blade back twist profile was identified. This had a back twist angle of −3 deg and started at 87.5% along the blade length and achieved a 5.1% increase in the tower fatigue life.

Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (10) ◽  
pp. 1897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Ward ◽  
Maurizio Collu ◽  
Joy Sumner

The necessity of producing more electricity from renewable sources has been driven predominantly by the need to prevent irreversible climate chance. Currently, industry is looking towards floating offshore wind turbine solutions to form part of their future renewable portfolio. However, wind turbine loads are often increased when mounted on a floating rather than fixed platform. Negative damping must also be avoided to prevent tower oscillations. By presenting a turbine actively pitching-to-stall, the impact on the tower fore–aft bending moment of a blade with back twist towards feather as it approaches the tip was explored, utilizing the time domain FAST v8 simulation tool. The turbine was coupled to a floating semisubmersible platform, as this type of floater suffers from increased fore–aft oscillations of the tower, and therefore could benefit from this alternative control approach. Correlation between the responses of the blade’s flapwise bending moment and the tower base’s fore–aft moment was observed with this back-twisted pitch-to-stall blade. Negative damping was also avoided by utilizing a pitch-to-stall control strategy. At 13 and 18 m/s mean turbulent winds, a 20% and 5.8% increase in the tower axial fatigue life was achieved, respectively. Overall, it was shown that the proposed approach seems to be effective in diminishing detrimental oscillations of the power output and in enhancing the tower axial fatigue life.


Author(s):  
Masaaki Aoki ◽  
Sharath Srinivasamurthy ◽  
Kazuhiro Iijima ◽  
Naoyuki Hara ◽  
Tomoki Ikoma ◽  
...  

Wind power generation has been paid much attention over the years as a countermeasure against global warming. Especially in recent years, researches and developments have also been made on Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) in relatively deep offshore. Unlike Bottom-mounted Offshore Wind Turbine (BOWT), the motion characteristics of FOWT is complicated owing to coupled response of wind turbine and floating platform motions since the FOWT system is not fixed to the seabed. Due to these complexities, negative damping is one of the major problems reported for SPAR type FOWT moored by catenary chains. Negative Damping, in which the natural periodic motion is excited by blade pitch control employed for keeping the power generation constant, has to be addressed. In this paper, we discuss the negative damping of TLP type FOWT with a series of dedicated experiments. We manufactured a 1/100th-scale model TLP type FOWT model with a primary control system of the blade pitch angle for a geometrically scaled model of the 5MW wind turbine based on the NREL. At first, we formulated the mechanism for occurrence of Negative Damping and derived the conditions under which unstable fluctuations of the floating platform occurs using the motion equation. After that, we conducted scale model tank tests in wind alone and confirmed the phenomenon wherein the fluctuation of the floating platform does not converge. Finally, how dangerous such coupled motion of wind turbine and floating platform would be for real-scale FOWT is discussed.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luca Pustina ◽  
Claudio Pasquali ◽  
Jacopo Serafini ◽  
Claudio Lugni ◽  
Massimo Gennaretti

Abstract Among the renewable energy technologies, offshore wind energy is expected to provide a significant contribution for the achievement of the European Renewable Energy (RE) targets for the next future. In this framework, the increase of generated power combined with the alleviation of vibratory loads achieved by application of suitable advanced control systems can lead to a beneficial LCOE (Levelized Cost Of Energy) reduction. This paper defines a control strategy for increasing floating offshore wind turbine lifetime through the reduction of vibratory blade and hub loads. To this purpose a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller based on measured blade-root bending moment feedback provides the blade cyclic pitch to be actuated. The proportional and integral gain matrices are determined by an optimization procedure whose objective is the alleviation of the vibratory loads due to a wind distributed linearly on the rotor disc. This control synthesis process relies on a linear, state-space, reduced-order model of the floating offshore wind turbine derived from aero-hydroelastic simulations provided by the open-source tool OpenFAST. In addition to the validation of the proposed controller, the numerical investigation based on OpenFAST predictions examines also the corresponding control effort, influence on platform dynamics and expected blade lifetime extension. The outcomes show that, as a by-product of the alleviation of the vibratory out-of-plane bending moment at the blade root, significant reductions of both cumulative blade lifetime damage and sway and roll platform motion are achieved, as well. The maximum required control power is less than 1% of the generated power.


Author(s):  
Dawn Ward ◽  
Maurizio Collu ◽  
Joy Sumner

Abstract Floating offshore wind turbines are subjected to higher tower fatigue loads than their fixed-to-seabed counterparts, which could lead to reductions in turbine life. The worst increases are generally seen in the tower axial fatigue, associated with the tower fore-aft bending moment. For a spar type platform this has been shown to increase by up to x2.5 and, for a semi-submersible platform, by up to x1.8. Reducing these loads would be beneficial, as the alternative of strengthening the towers leads to increases in cost. Here, two offshore floating wind turbine systems, of the spar type, are analysed and selected responses and tower fatigue compared: one incorporates a variable speed, variable pitch-to-stall blade control system and a back twisted blade, and the other a conventional pitch-to-feather control. The results are then compared to those obtained in an earlier study, where the same turbine configurations were coupled to a semi-submersible platform. A weighted wind frequency analysis at three mean turbulent wind speeds highlights that the impact of the back twist angle magnitude and initiation point on tower axial fatigue life extension was the same for both platform types. Compared to their respective feather base models, an increase in the tower axial fatigue life of 18.8% was seen with a spar platform and 10.2% with a semi-submersible platform, when a back twist angle to the tip of −6° was imposed along with the variable speed, variable pitch-to-stall control.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1452 ◽  
pp. 012034
Author(s):  
H M Johlas ◽  
L A Martínez-Tossas ◽  
M A Lackner ◽  
D P Schmidt ◽  
M J Churchfield

Author(s):  
Mohammed Khair Al-Solihat ◽  
Meyer Nahon ◽  
Kamran Behdinan

This paper presents a rigid multibody dynamic model to simulate the dynamic response of a spar floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT). The system consists of a spar floating platform, the moorings, the wind turbine tower, nacelle, and the rotor. The spar platform is modeled as a six degrees-of-freedom (6DOFs) rigid body subject to buoyancy, hydrodynamic and moorings loads. The wind turbine tower supports rigid nacelle and rotor at the tip. The rigid rotor is modeled as a disk spinning around its axis and subject to the aerodynamic load. The generator torque control law is incorporated into the system dynamics to capture the rotor spinning speed response when the turbine is operating below the rated wind speed. The equations of motions are derived using Lagrange's equation in terms of the platform quasi-coordinates and rotor spin speed. The external loads due to hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, and aerodynamics are formulated and incorporated into the equations of motion. The dynamic simulations of the spar FOWT are performed for three load cases to examine the system eigen frequencies, free decay response, and response to a combined wave and wind load. The results obtained from the present model are validated against their counterparts obtained from other simulation tools, namely, FAST, HAWC2, and Bladed, with excellent agreement. Finally, the influence of the rotor gyroscopic moment on the system dynamics is investigated.


2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhixin Zhao ◽  
Wenhua Wang ◽  
Dongdong Han ◽  
Wei Shi ◽  
Yulin Si ◽  
...  

Abstract A braceless semi-submersible floating platform is proposed for a Technical University of Denmark (DTU) 10-MW wind turbine at moderate water depths with reference to an existing National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 5-MW braceless semi-submersible floating platform, and a servo control system for a 10-MW semi-submersible floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) is introduced. To control the ultimate and fatigue loads of the FOWT, a fore-aft tuned mass damper (TMD) installed in the nacelle of the 10-MW semi-submersible FOWT was investigated for vibration alleviation and load reduction. Considering the hydrodynamic and mooring effect, a four degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) (platform surge and pitch motions, tower fore-aft bending, and TMD translation) simplified dynamic model for the 10-MW semi-submersible FOWT is established based on D’Alembert’s principle. Then, the parameter estimation is conducted based on the Levenberg–Marquardt (LM) algorithm, and the simplified dynamic model was further verified by comparing the output responses with FAST and the proposed model. Furthermore, the exhaustive search (ES) and genetic algorithm (GA) are embedded into the simplified dynamic model to optimize the TMD parameters. Finally, a fully coupled time-domain simulation for all the selected environmental conditions is conducted in FAST, and the vibration suppression performance of the optimized TMD design for the 10-W semi-submersible FOWT was further examined and analyzed.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (19) ◽  
pp. 3737 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thanh Dam Pham ◽  
Hyunkyoung Shin

Floating offshore wind turbines promise to provide an abundant source of energy. Currently, much attention is being paid to the efficient performance and the economics of floating wind systems. This paper aims to develop a spar-type platform to support a 5-MW reference wind turbine at a water depth of 150 m. The spar-type platform includes a moonpool at the center. The design optimization process is composed of three steps; the first step uses a spreadsheet to calculate the platform dimensions; the second step is a frequency domain analysis of the responses in wave conditions; and the final step is a fully coupled simulation time domain analysis to obtain the dynamic responses in combined wind, wave, and current conditions. By having a water column inside the open moonpool, the system’s dynamic responses to horizontal and rotating motions are significantly reduced. Reduction of these motions leads to a reduction in the nacelle acceleration and tower base bending moment. On the basic of optimization processes, a spar-type platform combined with a moonpool is suggested, which has good performance in both operational conditions and extreme conditions.


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