Development of a digital twin of an onshore wind turbine using monitoring data

Abstract

The present paper has two main objectives: (1) to create a digital twin of an onshore wind turbine to provide to the owner of the wind farm a tool for continuous tracking of accumulated fatigue damage and evaluation of alternative operation strategies; (2) to perform the first tasks for the creation a reliable numerical of a floating wind turbine to simulate experimental data for the testing of monitoring tools on this type of wind turbines. A numerical model of an onshore wind turbine was created with FAST software developed by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The structural and mechanical properties of the structure were calculated from the geometric properties of the tower and blades. The aerodynamic properties of different sections of the blades were computed with 2D models created with ANSYS Fluent. Having the wind turbine fully characterised, the control mechanisms were calibrated using data from the manufacturer catalogues. Numerous time series of wind excitation for different operation conditions were generated, and the structural response computed. Additionally, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) operating in parallel with a series of extensometers and accelerometers located in strategic points along a real wind turbine tower and blades provided a full description of the internal forces in both locations and the estimation of the modal properties for different operating conditions. Both measured and simulated response allowed the identification and validation of structural dynamic properties and static and dynamic internal loads. In spite of several approximations and simplifications, the results obtained with the numerical model were in good agreement with the ones measured in the field.

Definition of the Future Skills Needs of Job Profiles in the Renewable Energy Sector

“…Therefore, digital twins are key enablers for the integration of renewable energy sources in smart grids, as they can predict, monitor, control, and diagnose energy supply [26]. Another application of digital twins is the monitorization of renewable energy generators as both physical damage and performance can be forecasted and modeled [27][28][29][30][31].…”

Digital Twin Technologies for Turbomachinery in a Life Cycle Perspective: A Review

“…From Table 1, it can be concluded that most research focuses on turbines [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] and aeroengines [14,[45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52]. In terms of the application of turbines, research on wind turbines [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37] accounts for a large proportion. In the aerospace field, some scholars have made efforts on aeroengines [45,47], while others have studied aircraft [14,[49][50][51][52].…”

“…From the perspective of the life cycle, the most numerous phases are monitoring [30][31][32][34][35][36][37]47] and manufacturing [27,[39][40][41]45,51]. In addition, there is currently a certain amount of research in the prediction [14,25,26,44,46] and design [27,38,42] phases, and many scholars are also concerned about the operation and maintenance [29,43,51] phase.…”

“…Thus, in recent years, most of the research has been related to turbomachinery assets. There are some studies that have established a complete system or platform [26,30,[35][36][37][38]43,52]; however, more research has only proposed a framework or model of the DT [14,24,25,[27][28][29][31][32][33][34][39][40][41][42][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51], and turning them into practical applications remains to be studied. A practical assembly site which is consisted by coordination element, coordination relationship, and control method for coordination accuracy Notes: "Yes" or "No" under Sustainability: The object has sustainability or not; "-": Related information is not available from the source.…”

A Human-Cyber-Physical System toward Intelligent Wind Turbine Operation and Maintenance

“…In more recent works, the concept of a modern DT was outlined for application to aircraft and aerospace structures [4,5], and further reviews on the application of DT technology can be found in [6,7]. Studies [8][9][10][11][12][13] have discussed the development of a digital twin of wind turbines, structural health monitoring using Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) data and autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), damage detection using an AI-assisted image process, and alternative algorithms for wind turbines. These studies [8][9][10][11][12][13] have contributed to bringing more autonomy, automation, and optimization into wind turbines, which increasingly grow in size and complexity.…”