Wind Turbine Drivetrain Test Bench Capability to Replicate Design Loads: Part I — Evaluation Methodology

Author(s):  
Philippe Giguère ◽  
John R. Wagner

The utilization of a ground-based testing facility for full-size wind turbine drivetrains is growing. Several test benches have been developed to apply torque and non-torque loads. These mechanical loads can be the loads used to design the drivetrain components or loads obtained from field measurements. Irrespective of the reason for testing a drivetrain, the selected test bench should have the capability to impose the loads of interest. The design of these test benches and their capabilities vary, and the loads of interest vary between drivetrain designs. A systematic method to evaluate the capability of a test bench to impose the loads of interest has been developed. This method can be applied to any test bench and drivetrain design. Part I of this paper presents the methodology and recommendations for presenting and interpreting the results. The demonstration of the method is the focus of part II. Overall, this two-part paper aims to establish guidelines for consideration by the IEA task force 35 for ground based testing for wind turbines and their components.

Author(s):  
M. D. Pandey ◽  
H. J. Sutherland

Robust estimation of wind turbine design loads for service lifetimes of 30 to 50 years that are based on field measurements of a few days is a challenging problem. Estimating the long-term load distribution involves the integration of conditional distributions of extreme loads over the mean wind speed and turbulence intensity distributions. However, the accuracy of the statistical extrapolation is fairly sensitive to both model and sampling errors. Using measured inflow and structural data from the LIST program, this paper presents a comparative assessment of extreme loads using three distributions: namely, the Gumbel, Weibull and Generalized Extreme Value distributions. The paper uses L-moments, in place of traditional product moments, to reduce the sampling error. The paper discusses the application of extreme value theory and highlights its practical limitations. The proposed technique has the potential of improving estimates of the design loads for wind turbines.


Author(s):  
Uwe Jassmann ◽  
Anica Frehn ◽  
Heiko Röttgers ◽  
Fritz Santjer ◽  
Christian Mehler ◽  
...  

AbstractThis paper presents measurement results of the world wide first successful certification the electrical properties of a wind turbine, solely based upon measurements obtained at a system test bench with HiL-System and grid emulator. For all certification relevant tests the results are compared to field measurements. The impact of the real-time models in the HiL-System as well as the converter-based grid emulator are discussed in this paper. For full converter wind turbine, different requirements for the model depth could be determined depending on the tests. Nevertheless, higher-quality models that reflect the plant behaviour better are recommended to reduce uncertainties within the certification process. This paper also shows that especially for grid failure events grid emulators require real-time impedance control, in order to emulate grid failures properly. Based on these findings, recommendations for the requirements on test bench components are formulated in this paper, in order to contribute to new certification guidelines. Overall, we conclude that based on the experiences made at two different system test benches, the vast majority of certification measurements can be carried out without limitation at such system test benches.


Author(s):  
Philippe Giguère ◽  
John R. Wagner

The systematic evaluation of wind turbine drivetrains using hardware-in-the-loop strategies (previously presented in Part I) is demonstrated using a state-of-the-art multi-MW drivetrain design and a 7.5-MW test bench. The test bench has the capability to apply both torque and non-torque loads to the electro-mechanical drivetrain. The proposed method to evaluate the capability of a test bench to impose the loads of interest uses design loads of the drivetrain and the test bench load application unit limits as inputs. The design loads are defined by stochastic time series of the longitudinal, lateral, and vertical forces as well as the yawing and nodding bending moments that the load application unit can concurrently apply to the drivetrain (i.e., combined loading). A total of 14 time series sets are considered to capture the minimum and maximum values of the longitudinal, lateral, vertical, and resultant forces as well as the yawing, nodding, and resultant moments. These time series are processed individually to calculate two metrics: the coverage and the capability ratio of the test bench. The former is a percentage of the time series that be applied by the test bench, and the latter indicates an excess (or deficit) in load application capability as compared with the selected design loads. The results are presented and interpreted using the previously described methodology. The findings suggest a good match between test bench capability and the loads of interest in general, and also points to challenges. These discoveries establish a basis for the experimental verification and the development of compensation methods to enhance test bench capabilities.


Author(s):  
Ryan Schkoda ◽  
Konstantin Bulgakov ◽  
Kalyan Chakravarthy Addepalli ◽  
Imtiaz Haque

This paper describes the system level, dynamic modeling and simulation strategy being developed at the Wind Turbine Drivetrain Testing Facility (WTDTF) at Clemson University’s Restoration Institute in North Charleston, SC, USA. An extensible framework that allows various workflows has been constructed and used to conduct preliminary analysis of one of the facility’s test benches. The framework dictates that component and subsystem models be developed according to a list of identified needs and modeled in software best suited for the particular task. Models are then integrated according to the desired execution target. This approach allows for compartmentalized model development which is well suited for collaborative work. The framework has been applied to one of the test benches and has allowed researches to begin characterizing its behavior in the time and frequency domain.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-103
Author(s):  
Ruba Asim Hamza ◽  
Amged Osman Abdelatif

Sudan is one of the developing countries that suffers from a lack of electricity, where the national electrification rate is estimated at 38.5%. In order to solve this problem, it is possible to use renewable energy sources such as wind energy. Beside many aspects to be considered at the design of wind turbine foundations, more attention should be given to the geotechnical part. There are many types of foundations for wind turbines. The foundation must satisfy two design criteria: 1) It should be safe against bearing failure in soils under design loads and settlements during the life of the structure must not cause structural damage; 2) In addition to static loads, wind turbine foundations loads are extremely eccentrically and the loading is usually highly dynamic. Therefore, the selection of foundation type should consider these two criteria taking into account the nature and magnitude of these loads. This paper presents a review of different types of wind turbine foundations of focusing on on-shore wind turbine foundation types and the dynamic response of wind turbine. The paper also demonstrate experimentally the dynamic response of the wind turbines using wind tunnel facility test on a scaled model.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (06) ◽  
pp. 907-913 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Quiles ◽  
Emilio Garciia ◽  
Javier Cervera ◽  
Javier Vives

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