Supplementing wind turbine pitch control with a trailing edge flap smart rotor

Abstract

Placement of additional control devices along the span of the wind turbine blades is being considered for multi-MW wind turbines to actively alter the local aerodynamic characteristics of the blades. This smart rotor approach can reduce loads on the rotor due to wind field non-uniformity, but also, as presented in this paper, can supplement the pitch control system. Rotor speed and tower vibration damping are actively controlled using pitch. By supplementing the speed control using smart rotor control, pitch actuator travel is reduced by 15 pitch rates by 23 and pitch accelerations by 42 This is achieved through filtering the pitch demand such that high frequency signals are dealt with by the smart rotor devices while the low frequency signal is dealt with by pitching the blades. It is also shown that this may be achieved while also using the smart rotor control for load reduction, though with reduced effectiveness. This shows that smart rotor control can be used to trade pitch actuator requirements as well as load reductions with the cost of installing and maintaining the distributed devices.