Operational Risk Assessment of Wind Turbine Structures Using Probabilistic Analysis of Aerodynamically Induced Vibrations

The study of efficiency and safety for wind turbine structures under variable operating conditions is increasingly important for wind turbine design. Optimum aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine demands that serviceability effects and ultimate strength loads remain under safety design limits. From the perspective of wind turbine efficiency, variations in wind speed causes bluffing effects and vortex shedding that lead to vibration intensities in the longitudinal and transversal direction that can negatively impact aerodynamic performance of the turbine. From the perspective of wind turbine safety, variations in loading may lead to transient internal loads that threaten the safety of the structure. Inertial effects and asynchronous delays on rotational-force transmission may generate similar hazards. Monitoring and controlling displacement limits and load demands at critical tower locations can improve the efficiency of wind power generation, not to mention the structural performance of the turbine from both a strength and serviceability point of view. In this study, a probabilistic monitoring approach is developed to measure the response of the combined tower/nacelle/blade system to stochastic loading, estimate peak demand, and compare that demand to building code-derived estimates of structural resistance. Risk assessment is performed for the effects of along and across-wind forces in a framework of quantitative risk analysis with the goal of developing a near real-time estimate of structural risk that may be used to monitor safety and serviceability of the structure as well as regulate the aggressiveness of the controller that commands the blade angle of attack. To accomplish this goal, a numerical simulation of the aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine (including blades, the nacelle and the tower) is analyzed to study the interaction between the structural system and incoming flow. A model based on distributed-stationary random wind load profile for the combined along-wind and across-wind responses is implemented in Matlab to simulate full aero-elastic dynamic analysis to simulate tower with nacelle, hub, rotor and tower substructures. Self-weight, rotational, and axial effects of the blades, as well as lateral resistance of substructure elements are incorporated in the finite element model, including vortex-shedding effects on the wake zone. Reliability on the numerical solution is inspected on the tower structure by comparing the numerical solution with established experimental-analytical procedures.

Computer-Aided Development of Shape Memory Actuators as an Approach Towards a Standardized Developing Method

Shape memory alloys (SMA) are thermally activated smart materials. Due to their ability to change into a previously imprinted actual shape through the means of thermal activation, they are suitable as actuators for mechatronical systems. Despite of the advantages shape memory alloy actuators provide (lightweight-actuators, lower costs…etc.) these elements are only seldom integrated by engineers into mechatronical systems. The reason for this phenomenon is the insufficiently described dynamic behavior, especially at different boundary conditions. Also the lack of empirical data (like fatigue behavior and thermal balances) is a reason why development projects with shape memory actuators lead often to failures. Therefore a need of developing methods, standardized testings of empirical properties and computer aided actuator development systems is motivated. Based on an analysis of energy fluxes into and out of the actuator, a numerical model, implemented in MATLAB/SIMULINK is presented. The numerical model includes also a configuration and design tool which allows simulating different solutions to a problem. Additionally, this paper describes a development method for SMA which is fitted to uniqueness of these smart materials. In conclusion, this paper compares the conventional developing process to the presented method applying a mechatronical SMA-device.

Damage Detection in Flexible Propeller Beam Structures by Exploiting Impact-Induced Coupled Acceleration Signals

A local damage at the tip of a composite propeller is diagnosed by properly comparing its impact-induced free coupled dynamics to that of a pristine wooden propeller of the same size and shape. This is accomplished by creating indirectly via collocated measurements distributed information for the coupled acceleration field of the propellers. The powerful data-driven modal expansion analysis delivered by the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) Transform reveals that ensembles of impact-induced collocated coupled experimental acceleration signals are underlined by a high level of spatio-temporal coherence. Thus they furnish a valuable spatio-temporal sample of coupled response induced by a point impulse. In view of this fact, a tri-axial sensor was placed on the propeller hub to collect collocated coupled acceleration signals induced via modal hammer nondestructive impacts and thus obtained a reduced order characterization of the coupled free dynamics. This experimental data-driven analysis reveals that the in-plane unit components of the POD modes for both propellers have similar shapes-nearly identical. For the damaged propeller this POD shape-difference is quite pronounced. The shapes of the POD modes are used to compute indices of difference reflecting directly damage. At the first POD energy level, the shape-difference indices of the damaged composite propeller are quite larger than those of the pristine wooden propeller.

Design Equations for Binary Shape Memory Actuators Under Arbitrary External Forces

The paper presents the design equations for an on-off shape memory alloy actuator under an arbitrary system of external constant forces. A binary SMA actuator is considered where a cursor is moved against both conservative and dissipative force which may be different during the push or pull phase. Three cases are analyzed and differentiated in the way the bias force is applied to the primary SMA spring, using a constant force, a traditional spring, or a second SMA spring. Closed-form dimensionless design equations are developed, which form the basis of a step-by-step procedure for an optimal design of the whole actuator.

Nonlinear Stochastic Feedback Controllers for Vibratory Energy Harvesters With Power Flow Constraints

This study addresses the formulation of feedback controllers for stochastically-excited vibratory energy harvesters. Maximizing power generation from stochastic disturbances can be accomplished using LQG control theory, with the transducer current treated as the control input. For the case where the power flow direction is unconstrained, an electronic drive capable of extracting as well as delivering power to the transducer is required to implement the optimal controller. It is demonstrated that for stochastic disturbances characterized by second-order, bandpass-filtered white noise, energy harvesters can be passively tuned such that optimal stationary power generation only requires half of the system states for feedback in the active circuit. However, there are many applications where the implementation of a bi-directional power electronic drive is infeasible, due to the higher parasitic losses they must sustain. If the electronics are designed to be capable of only single-directional power flow (i.e., where the electronics are incapable of power injection), then these parasitics can be reduced significantly, which makes single-directional converters more appropriate at smaller power scales. The constraint on the directionality of power flow imposes a constraint on the feedback laws that can be implemented with such converters. In this paper, we present a sub-optimal nonlinear control design technique for this class of problems, which exhibits an analytically computable upper bound on average power generation.

Material Characterization and Mid-Span Bending Capacity With Finite Element Simulated Predictions

Intelligent materials have been the subject of research for many years. Shape memory alloys (SMAs) are a type of intelligent material that has been targeted for many different uses; such as actuators, sensors and structural supports. SMAs are attractive as actuators due to their large energy density. Although a great deal of information is available on the axial load capacity and on the tip force for SMA tweezer-like devices, there is not enough information about the load capacity at mid-span, especially at the macro-level. Imposed displacement at mid-span experimental evaluation of an SMA beam in the austenitic and martensitic regimes has been studied. To this end, a specimen of near equi-atomic nitinol was heat-treated (shape set) into a ‘U’ shape and loaded into a custom test fixture such that the boundary conditions of the beam are approximated as roller-roller; and the sample was deformed at different temperatures while reaction forces were measured. The displacement is near maximum displacement of the U shape without causing a change in concavity, thus full-scale capacity is shown. Additionally, Unified Model (finite element) predictions of the experimental response are also presented, with good agreement. Due to the robust nature of the Unified Model, geometric parameter variations (wire diameter and radius of curvature) were then simulated to encompass the design envelop for such an actuator. The material properties needed as inputs to the Unified Model were obtained from constant temperature tensile tests of a specimen subjected to the same heat treatment (shape set straight). The resultant critical stresses were then extracted using the tangent method similar to the one described in ASTM F-2082. It is worth noting that the specimen was trained before the stress value extraction, but the transversely loaded specimen was not trained due to the difficulty involved (inherent uneven stress distribution). The contribution of this work is the presentation of experimental results for transverse (mid-span) loading of a nitinol wire and the simulation results allowing for design of a proper actuator with known constraints on force, displacement or temperature (2 of 3 needed). In other words, this work could be used as a type of 3D look-up table; e.g. for a desired force/displacement, the required temperatures are given. Future work includes developing a sensor-less control strategy for simultaneous force/displacement control.

Power Output and Dissipation of a Negative Capacitance Shunt Coupled to Piezoelectric Transducers

A negative capacitance shunt is a basic, analog, active circuit electrically connected to a piezoelectric transducer to control vibrations of flexural bodies. The electrical impedance of the negative capacitance shunt modifies the effective modulus of the piezoelectric element to reduce the stiffness and increase the damping which causes a decrease in amplitude of the vibrating structure to which the elements are bonded. The negative capacitance circuit is built around a single operational amplifier using passive circuit elements. To gain insight into the electromechanical coupling, the power consumption of the op-amp and the power dissipated in the resistive element are measured. The power output of the op-amp increases for increasing control gain of the negative capacitance. The power characteristics of the shunt are compared to the reactive input power analysis developed in earlier work.

Structural Health Monitoring Technology for Aerospace Composite Propellant Tank

In this paper the experimental activities that were performed at Thales Alenia Space (TAS-I) System, Turin, Italy by Acellent Technologies Inc is presented. The final objective was defining a Vehicle / Vehicle Subsystem, built-in Health Management System which embeds self diagnosis and prognosis functions. Under this program a Composite Overwrapped Pressure Vessel (COPV) for space applications was monitored under pressure cycling (mechanical loading). The subscale demonstrator consisted of an aluminium metallic liner over wrapped by a CFRP layer. The metallic liner is seamless and manufactured by spin-forming. The liner material is aluminum AA6061 T6, with Yield Strength of 286 MPa, as declared by the bottle supplier (US Hydrospin); expected elongation to rupture is around 10%. The test was conducted for 3 days on a water filled COPV and at the end of three days the metal liner inside the propellant tank was cracked and caused water leakage. Acellent used a statistical data interpretation technique via feature extraction and data modeling approach to demonstrate that the system was able to generate the early alarm and also capable of localizing the damage which appeared at two hot spot locations.

Exact Solution for Bending of Shape Memory Alloy Superelastic Beams

Bending is a common mode of application and operation of shape memory alloys (SMA). So far the coupled thermomechanical behavior of these alloys have been modeled with numerical methods such as finite element. The issue in developing exact solutions for a SMA beam in bending is because of the distributed and hysteric stress-strain profile. In this paper an analytical approach is developed to find the exact solution for the displacement due to the applied force on the SMA superelastic beam. The approach is based on the assumption of linear distribution of strain along the height of a cross section in the beam. The solution is validated by experimental data and the results of the solution for a superelastic beams for different cases are illustrated.

Dynamic Finite Element Analysis of a Highly Parallel Robotic Surface

A novel three-dimensional robotic surface is devised using triangular modules connected by revolute joints that mimic the constraints of a spherical joint at each triangle intersection. The finite element method (FEM) is applied to the dynamic loading of this device using three dimensional (6 degrees of freedom) beam elements to not only calculate the cartesian displacement and force, but also the angular displacement and torque at each joint. In this way, the traditional methods of finding joint forces and torques are completely bypassed. An effiecient algorithm is developed to linearly combine local mass and stiffness matrices into a full structural stiffness matrix for the easy application of loads. An analysis of optimal dynamic joint forces is carried out in Simulink® with the use of an algebraic Ricatti equation.