Hyungyu Kim

Development of a Time-Domain Simulation Tool for Offshore Wind Farms

A time-domain simulation tool to predict the dynamic power output of wind turbines in an offshore wind farm was developed in this study. A wind turbine model consisting of first or second order transfer functions of various wind turbine elements was combined with the Ainslie’s eddy viscosity wake model to construct the simulation tool. The wind turbine model also includes an aerodynamic model that is a look up table of power and thrust coefficients with respect to the tip speed ratio and pitch angle of the wind turbine obtained by a commercial multi-body dynamics simulation tool. The wake model includes algorithms of superposition of multiple wakes and propagation based on Taylor’s frozen turbulence assumption. Torque and pitch control algorithms were implemented in the simulation tool to perform max-Cp and power regulation control of the wind turbines. The simulation tool calculates wind speeds in the two-dimensional domain of the wind farm at the hub height of the wind turbines and yields power outputs from individual wind turbines. The NREL 5MW reference wind turbine was targeted as a wind turbine to obtain parameters for the simulation. To validate the simulation tool, a Danish offshore wind farm with 80 wind turbines was modelled and used to predict the power from the wind farm. A comparison of the prediction with the measured values available in literature showed that the results from the simulation program were fairly close to the measured results in literature except when the wind turbines are congruent with the wind direction.

A Study on the Active Induction Control of Upstream Wind Turbines for total power increases

In this study, the effect of active induction control of upstream wind turbines is investigated. Two scaled wind turbines having a rotor diameter of 1 m with a spacing of four times of the rotor diameter were used to experimentally validate the concept. Also, an in-house c code was used to simulate the same two wind turbines and see if the experimental observations can be obtained. From the experiment, approximately 0.81% increase of total power could be observed. Although the simulation results were not exactly the same as the experimental results but the shape was similar and the maximum power increase of 0.27% was predicted. Also from further simulation using NREL 5MW wind turbines instead of scaled wind turbines with realistic ambient turbulence intensity, it was found that the power increase could become more than 1%.

Design and performance analysis of control algorithm for a floating wind turbine on a large semi-submersible platform

A control algorithm for a floating wind turbine installed on a large semi-submersible platform is investigated in this study. The floating wind turbine is different from other typical semi-submersible floating wind turbines in that the platform is so large that the platform motion is not affected by the blade pitch control. For simulation, the hydrodynamic forces data were obtained from ANSYS/AQWA, and implemented to Bladed. For the basic pitch controller, the well-known technique to increase damping by reducing the bandwidth of the controller lower than the platform pitch mode was implemented. Also, to reduce the tower load in the pitch control region, a tower damper based on the nacelle angular acceleration signal was designed. Compared with the results obtained from an onshore wind turbine controller applied to the floating wind turbine, the floating wind turbine controller could reduce the tower moments effectively, however, the standard deviation in power increased significantly.