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Title:
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Distributed Blade Control
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Author(s):
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Published by:
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Publication date:
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ECN
Wind Energy
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21-10-2010
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ECN report number:
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Document type:
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ECN-M--10-073
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Conference Paper
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Number of pages:
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Full text:
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17
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Download PDF
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Presented at: The Science of Making Torque from Wind, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 28-30 juni 2010.
Abstract:
Wind turbine designs are driven by aerodynamic
loads on the structure. If loads are reduced, the
dimensions of certain parts and the total cost can
be reduced. Individual pitch control (IPC) is known
to be effective, but a rotor with distributed blade
control (DBC), also known as a smart rotor, can
achieve more. With DBC the aerodynamic shape
of the blade is adapted locally to reduce loads.
Such a system can react quicker than IPC and can
be tuned to local conditions.
This paper focusses on the combining different
sensors with various control structures and shows
what reductions in fatigue load can be obtained
with DBC within realistic constraints.
A rotor equipped with two control devices on each
blade is examined. The resulting controllers are
tuned to achieve performance within constraints
and their stability is analysed. A linearised model
of the Upwind 5MW reference turbine is used. The
resulting damage equivalent loads are compared
with those for baseline controller and IPC.
This paper confirms that DBC is effective, reducing
the damage equivalent loads by up to nearly
50% relative to the baseline controller. That is 18-
27% more reduction than IPC can achieve on its
own. From the different sensor-controller combinations
measuring the in-blade moments near the
DBC actuators is found to be less useful than flapwise
blade velocities or blade root moments. The
best results are obtained when IPC and DBC are
used together. The results show that it is also important
to examine the effect on other turbine components.
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