Simplified vs. Full-Scale Onshore Wind Turbine Models: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

With the growth in demand for renewable energy, the number, size and production capabilities of wind turbines have grown significantly. Such turbines are subjected to high force fluctuations and are prone to damage, thus requiring a robust and accurate structural identification scheme. Since the modeling of a full scale wind turbine is a rather complex matter, a simplified model for onshore wind turbine tower identification is used in this contribution, followed by a structural identification and damage detection of the turbine tower using a variety of sensor, noise and damage scenarios. The studied wind turbine is an idling land-based version of a baseline 5-MW reference wind turbine developed by the national renewable energy laboratory (NREL). More than 1300 test setups were considered and the results obtained were satisfying in terms of accuracy and robustness and encourage the investigation of more complex identification problems such as, but not limited to, soil-structure interaction and the output-only identification of wind turbines, e.g. when input excitations are unknown.