Multivariable Model-Free Adaptive Controller Design With Differential Characteristic for Load Reduction of Wind Turbines

The asymmetric loads on wind turbines are becoming a fatal constraint factor with the increase of wind turbine size. In order to tackle this challenge, individual pitch control mechanism is introduced into the wind turbines. However, the application scopeof the traditional individual pitch control (IPC) is limited due to the complex dynamic coupling among wind turbine components, the strong nonlinearity of the pitch system and the inevitable unmodeled dynamics. Therefore, a multivariable model-free adaptive control (MIMO-DE-MFAC) strategy with differential characteristic is first proposed in this paper. Then, the proposed method is applied to the individual pitch control of the 5MW wind turbine. The simulation results from FAST demonstrate that the MIMO-DE-MFAC achieves a notable performance improvement on blade root compared with the PI. Furthermore, compared with other existing model-free adaptive control (MFAC) strategies, the proposed method not only achieves the optimal control results, but also has stronger robustness in speed-varying wind fields. Finally, the hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experiment further verifies the reliability of the above simulation results, which provides a useful reference value for the field test.