Towards Convex Economic Model Predictive Individual Pitch Control for Wind Turbine Load Mitigation

Wind turbines offer an appealing method for power generation. In the fight against global warming wind energy helps realise green house gas emission reduction targets. Moreover, given a globally increasing demand for energy, the role of wind energy is set to become even more important. Historically, the cost of wind energy has decreased...

Predicting the Pit-to-Crack Transition of Offshore Wind Turbine Foundations: A mechanistic determination

Offshore wind turbines are designed to persist harsh environmental conditions, including corrosion. Pitting corrosion is one of the most dangerous forms of corrosion. In combination with a fatigue loading, a corrosion pit could result into the failure of a structure, due to a minimal weight reduction. Of the corrosion fatigue process, the...

Semi-passive trailing-edge flaps: for ultimate and fatigue load reductions on wind turbines

This thesis investigates the potential of a semi-passive trailing-edge flap on a large conceptual wind turbine. The mechanism passively reacts to blade and tower accelerations by changing the airfoil camber, opposing the dynamic loads on the turbine. An active element is present, which influences the mean of the flap oscillation. First, a low...

Inflow conditions resulting in atypical wind turbine fatigue loading

This master’s thesis project related inflow conditions to atypical fatigue loading of wind turbines. The research was fully based on experimental data obtained in another project. First an expected fatigue loading was defined based on the mean wind speed and the turbulence intensity. Differences between expected and measured fatigue loading were...

On the effects of an azimuth offset in the MBC-transformation used by IPC for wind turbine fatigue load reductions

<br/>Wind energy currently is one of the most attractive solutions to help in the goal of switching to a more sustainable way of energy production. To stay competitive with other forms of energy production, the reduction of the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCoE) is an important indicator. One way of achieving this goal is by increasing the size of...