Fault-Tolerant Control of Floating Wind Turbine With Switched Adaptive Sliding Mode Controller

The fast-growing development of floating wind turbines demands control systems capable of both reducing output power fluctuations and fault-tolerant function. In this paper, we propose an adaptive switched sliding mode controller to enhance the performance of floating wind turbine systems in the presence of environmental uncertainties and actuator faults. A control-oriented switched linear model for floating wind turbines is introduced, considering the average dwell time. Based on the proposed controller, a full-order state observer and an adaptive law compensate for the debilitated control outputs resulting from detecting errors, disturbances, and faults. The control parameters are derived by solving stability theorems, which are proved by the Lyapunov stability theory, linear matrix inequality technique, and average dwell time technique. The proposed model and controller are validated on the NREL 5MW wind turbine and spar-buoy platform using the high-fidelity fatigue, aerodynamics, structures, and turbulence (FAST) code. The performance of the proposed controller is compared with an optimal gain-scheduling proportional-integral controller under different wind-wave combined conditions. The results show that the proposed controller improves the power quality and attenuates mechanical loads of floating wind turbine under healthy and faulty conditions. Note to Practitioners-Floating wind turbines have drawn significant interest in renewable energy. When operating in the ocean far from shore, it is of great importance for floating wind turbines to have fault-tolerance capabilities for achieving stable power quality when faults occur in one or more components. A challenging problem is how to mitigate the fault effects on the wind turbine system. This paper proposes an adaptive fault-tolerant control strategy in the case of actuator fault occurrence in floating wind turbines.