A method to avoid negative damped low frequent tower vibrations for a floating, pitch controlled wind turbine

Abstract

Wind turbines mounted on floating platforms is subjected to completely different and soft foundation properties, than seen for onshore wind turbines. This leads to much lower natural frequencies, related to the rigid body motion of the structure which again leads to an unfavorable coupling between tower motion and the pitch control of the turbine. The tower motion in combination with the aerodynamics and the pitch control will be poor or even negative damped which causes large transient loads if not accounted for. The reason for this low damping is shown to be caused by a too fast pitch regulation compared to the motion of the tower or in other words the lowest control-structure natural frequency must be lower than the lowest critical tower frequency. A control algorithm is presented including the tuning method (pole-placement) to ensure the desired control frequency which provides stable tower vibration modes.