Dual multivariable model-free adaptive individual pitch control for load reduction in wind turbines with actuator faults

Abstract Thanks to the great advances in the installations of large wind turbines, individual pitch control (IPC) has gained mounting interest among researchers. The actuator faults, however, have become a hindrance with the individual pitch process introducing more actuator actions and the pitch system operating in complex conditions. The traditional fault-tolerant control strategies of the IPC, which are mainly based on the system modeling information, and require the process of fault diagnosis, isolation or parameter estimation. The subsequent model errors and unmodeled dynamics have somehow limited the application of the strategies. Therefore, this paper proposes a passive fault-tolerant individual pitch control scheme independent of the above process, and based on the scheme, a dual multivariable model-free adaptive control strategy with differential characteristic is constructed. The benchmark 5MW wind turbine model provided by FAST is employed to evaluate the performance. The results show that, compared with the traditional individual pitch control strategy, the proposed scheme can achieve almost identical load control and even better power control under fault-free conditions. Once the fault occurs, the proposed scheme can quickly compensate for the faulty actuator dynamics, and finally achieve almost the same performance in power and load control as under the nominal conditions.