Fault-Tolerant Optimal Tip-Speed-Ratio Tracking Control of Wind Turbines Subject to Actuation Failures

In this paper, a maximum-power-point-tracking controller for variable-speed wind turbines (VSWTs) is developed, which is shown to be able to account for modeling uncertainties, unexpected disturbances, subsystem failures, and actuation saturation simultaneously. A novel memory-based approach is used to predict wind speed that is used to generate desired rotor speed accordingly. It is shown that the proposed algorithm not only is robust against nonlinear aerodynamics and adaptive to unknown and time-varying inertia/damp/stiffness properties of VSWTs but also is able to accommodate actuator failures under torque constraints. The benefits of the proposed control method are analytically authenticated and demonstrated with Fatigue, Aerodynamics, Structures, and Turbulence code and Simulink.