Fatigue Loads Alleviation of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Using Individual Pitch Control

Compared with the coast and the land, the vast deep-water wind resource represents a potential development of better resource. In recent years the Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) offers a feasible solution to generate more power with renewable energy. However, the influence of turbulent wind loads is the main cause to the floating offshore wind turbine above the rated wind speed region. Due to the fatigue vibration of the floating platform, the structure damage and the unstable generating system occur inevitably. Therefore the control system needs to concentrate more on reducing fatigue loads and irregular swing to smooth power output to enhance the stability and pull though sudden accidents. This paper proposes an innovative method of individual pitch control for FOWT, which uses an advanced memory-based optimal control strategy, to effectively reduce the asymmetric aerodynamic loads and the platform motion. In this paper, original wind turbine simulation software is developed. Analysis and simulations indicate that the advanced control strategy make a better performance on reducing the fatigue loads including tilt moment and yaw moment, and enhance the stability and reliability of the system.