Paper published by Goupee, Kimball, Dagher in Renewable Energy

December 8, 2016 Recent News

A paper by Dr. Andrew Goupee, Dr. Richard Kimball, and Dr. Habib Dagher has been accepted for publication in Renewable Energy, published by Elsevier. The paper, titled, “Experimental observations of active blade pitch and generator control influence on floating wind turbine response,” investigated the influence of wind turbine blade pitch and generator controls on the global response of a floating wind turbine.

Highlights

  • Wind/wave basin model tests are used to experimentally assess the influence of active turbine blade pitch and turbine controls on floating wind turbine motions and structural loads.
  • Mathematical explanations are provided for the experimentally observed controller-induced increases in the platform pitch damped natural period calculated from platform pitch free-decay tests.
  • Analysis from combined dynamic wind and irregular sea conditions show that turbine controllers significantly alter the frequency domain load and motion response in both amplitude and phase relative to the low-frequency wind excitation.
  • Active turbine controllers do not significantly alter floating wind turbine response in the wave energy frequency range.
  • Improvements in floating wind turbine dynamic response often come at the expense of increased blade pitch motion or increased variations in rotor speed.

Abstract

In this paper, the influence of wind turbine blade pitch and generator controls on the global response of a floating wind turbine is investigated. Several different active turbine controllers are considered and the resulting floating wind turbine global response is compared with that for a baseline configuration employing a fixed blade pitch and a fixed rotor speed. Results from platform pitch free-decay tests as well as a simultaneous dynamic wind and irregular sea state condition are used to understand the controllers’ influence on floating wind turbine dynamic behavior.

Citation

Andrew J. Goupee, Richard W. Kimball, Habib J. Dagher, Experimental observations of active blade pitch and generator control influence on floating wind turbine response, Renewable Energy, Available online 1 December 2016, ISSN 0960-1481, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.11.062. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148116310461)