Robust fault tolerant pitch control of wind turbines

Abstract

A controller designed for a nominal wind turbine model may not work in presence of either unmodeled dynamics or sensor or actuator faults. We propose a multiple model robust control strategy for turbine speed regulation and wind disturbance rejection in presence of faults in a turbine's pitch actuator. The fault is inspired by recent challenges in wind turbine fault-tolerant control and consists of changed actuator dynamics. The simulation results confirm that an appropriate design of a set of robust controllers together with a soft switching among them is a reliable method for fault-tolerant control in this scenario.