A Hardware-in-the-Loop Strategy for Control of a Wind Turbine Test Bench

Abstract

This paper presents a strategy for operating and simulating a full scale wind turbine test bench in order to emulate the field conditions experienced by the mechanical portion of a nacelle’s drivetrain. The presented strategy makes use of a real-time simulation of a wind turbine model to provide reference signals for the test bench. These reference signals include the thrust force, lateral force, vertical force, pitch moment, yaw moment, and drivetrain speed at the nacelle’s control point or hub point: a point along a nacelle’s drivetrain representing what would be the center of the nacelle hub. The effectiveness of this approach is studied with the help of a multibody, dynamic model of the 7.5 MW test bench located at Clemson University’s Wind Turbine Drivetrain Testing Facility. Simulation results show that the proposed control strategy is feasible for emulating field conditions on a wind turbine test bench.