IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 1, NO.

4, DECEMBER 2013 277

Modeling and Control to Mitigate Resonant Load

in Variable-Speed Wind Turbine Drivetrain
Irving P. Girsang, Student Member, IEEE, Jaspreet S. Dhupia, Member, IEEE, Eduard Muljadi, Fellow, IEEE,
Mohit Singh, Member, IEEE, and Jason Jonkman

Abstract— Failure of the drivetrain components is currently

listed among the most problematic failures during the operational
lifetime of a wind turbine. Guaranteeing robust and reliable
drivetrain designs is important to minimize the wind turbine
downtime as well as to meet demand in both power quantity
and quality. While aeroelastic codes are often used in the design
of wind turbine controllers, the drivetrain model in such codes is
limited to a few (mostly two) degrees of freedom, resulting in a
restricted detail in describing its dynamic behavior and assessing
the effectiveness of controllers on attenuating the drivetrain load.
In the previous work, the capability of the well-known FAST
aeroelastic tool for wind turbine has been enhanced through
integration of a dynamic model of a drivetrain. The drivetrain
model, built using the Simscape in the MATLAB/Simulink
environment, is applied in this paper. The model is used to
develop a power-electronics-based controller to prevent excessive
drivetrain load. The controller temporarily shifts the closed-
loop eigenfrequency of the drivetrain through the addition of
virtual inertia, thus avoiding the resonance. Simulation results
demonstrating the fidelity of the expanded drivetrain model as
well as the effectiveness of the virtual inertia controller are
presented.
Index Terms— Gears, resonance, torque control, variable speed
drives, wind power generation.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T HE wind energy industry has experienced substantial
growth in recent decades, which has been reflected in a
similar growth in the structural size and power rating of wind
turbines. The operating conditions of wind turbines are largely
determined by structural loadings such as wind turbulence and,
in offshore wind turbines, sea wave excitations. Aeroelastic
tools such as FAST [1], GH Bladed [2], and HAWC2 [3] have
been developed to model and simulate the dynamics of wind
turbines in response to different wind fields and controllers.
These codes can simulate various operating conditions and
output time series of turbine operational load variations.
Manuscript received July 31, 2013; revised September 13, 2013; accepted
September 15, 2013. Date of publication October 1, 2013; date of cur-
rent version October 29, 2013. This work was supported in part by the
U.S. Department of Energy under Contract DE-AC36-08-GO28308 with the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, in part by the Energy Innovation
Programme Office of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and in
part by the Energy Research Institute at Nanyang Technological University.
Recommended for publication by Associate Editor Wenzhong Gao.
I. P. Girsang and J. S. Dhupia are with the Nanyang Technological Univer-
sity, Singapore 639798 (e-mail: irving1@e.ntu.edu.sg; djaspreet@ntu.edu.sg).
E. Muljadi, M. Singh, and J. Jonkman are with the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO 80401 USA (e-mail:
eduard.muljadi@nrel.gov; mohit.singh@nrel.gov; jason.jonkman@nrel.gov).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JESTPE.2013.2284096
2168-6777 © 2013 IEEE
Fig. 1. Annual failure rates and corresponding downtime per failure for
components of a wind turbine [6].
The steadily increasing size of wind turbines has led to
larger transmitted forces and torques that bring up the influ-
ence of the gearbox and other drivetrain flexibilities in the
overall turbine dynamic response [4], [5], often leading to fail-
ure in the drivetrain components. Failure of the drivetrain com-
ponents is currently listed among the most problematic failures
during the operational lifetime of a wind turbine. Fig. 1 shows
that the failures of gearbox, generator, and other drivetrain
components contribute the longest downtime, thus becoming
sources of considerable costs [6]. In particular, gearbox-related
failures are responsible for more than 20% of the downtime of
wind turbines. Although the expected lifetime of gearboxes is
usually advertised as 20 years, in practice, gearboxes usually
need to be replaced every six to eight years [7].
Further insights into wind turbine drivetrain dynamics are
necessary in understanding the global dynamic response of a
wind turbine as well as in designing and preserving its internal
drivetrain components. However, in most of the aforemen-
tioned aeroelastic codes, the drivetrain model is reduced to
a few (mostly two) degrees of freedom, resulting in restricted
detail for describing its complex dynamic behavior. Although
researchers have developed dynamic models for wind turbine
drivetrains with various levels of fidelity [8]–[18], these studies
are often isolated drivetrain models, which do not provide
direct insights on the dynamic interactions with other compo-
nents of the wind turbine. The most recent study [18] takes a
decoupled approach in which the global turbine response was
first simulated using an aeroelastic tool. Then, the resulting
loads and motions of the rotor as well as the nacelle were
used as inputs to a high-fidelity drivetrain model to simulate
its internal dynamic responses. Thus, this approach fails to
capture the influence of the drivetrain internal dynamics onto
the overall turbine response.
278 IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 1, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2013
Flexible drivetrain inherits eigenfrequencies in its dynamics.
Harmonic excitations that match any of those eigenfrequencies
(i.e., resonance) can be detrimental to the turbine reliabil-
ity. During resonance, the system experiences large torsional
vibrations and fluctuating loads get transmitted. This in turn
shortens the lifetime of the drivetrain components due to
fatigue. In a fixed-speed turbine, the drivetrain eigenfrequen-
cies can be designed not to interfere with the harmonics of
the drivetrain rotational frequency. However, within the wide
speed range of a variable-speed turbine, there are certain
rotational speeds that can excite some of the drivetrain eigen-
frequencies.
To attenuate the resonant loads, various control strategies
have been proposed for wind turbine applications. Active
damping of the drivetrain and tower resonant modes was first
proposed in [19] for full load operation (i.e., above the rated
wind speed), and subsequently addressed in [20] and [21].
It proposes the use of bandpass filters (BPFs), which can
be tuned around the tower and/or drivetrain eigenfrequencies.
The proposed controller regulates the generator torque to
dampen the dominant drivetrain and tower modes based on a
feedback control law using the generator speed measurement.
This approach was also adopted for full load operation in
[22]. This time, it uses the band-pass filtered generator speed
measurement to manipulate the blade pitch angle, instead of
the generator torque, to dampen the drivetrain torsional mode.
The filter was gain scheduled to consider the nonlinear aerody-
namics. The BPF-based approach was applied for partial load
operation (i.e., below the rated wind speed) in [23]. Multiple
BPFs were used in to dampen all the drivetrain torsional
modes.
The generator torque can also be used to dampen the
transient drivetrain resonance in the event of grid fault in
both fixed-speed [24] and variable-speed turbines [25]. For
such cases, the use of power system stabilizer to help dampen
the drivetrain was proposed in [26]. The BPF-based method
for active torsional damping was adopted for wind turbine
generators (WTGs) with full-rated power converter in [27].
A model-based torsional vibration damper was proposed in
[28] as an alternative for the BPF-based one. This model-
based approach uses Kalman estimator to deal with parameter
uncertainties, which can occur within the turbine system.
Reference [29] has shown that the inherent simple drive-
train model of FAST yields inaccurate and incomplete pre-
diction of the drivetrain eigenfrequencies. Thus, this paper
investigates the response of a wind turbine drivetrain using
the enhanced capability of FAST through integration of a
higher fidelity dynamic model of a drivetrain. The proposed
drivetrain model is built using Simscape [30], [31], which is
a part of MATLAB/Simulink library specialized for modeling
physical systems. This model helps in design and verification
of active control strategies to mitigate the drivetrain loads in
the MATLAB/Simulink environment.
This paper aims to design a novel power-electronics-based
controller, using a concept of virtual inertia to preserve the
life of the drivetrain components, especially the gearbox.
The controller is implemented in this paper on a doubly fed
induction generator (DFIG) to regulate the rotor current to
TABLE I
M ODEL PARAMETERS OF GRC W IND T URBINE
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of DFIG.
deliver the required electromagnetic torque. In all of the afore-
mentioned studies, the role of the controllers is to regulate the
generator torque to actively add damping into the drivetrain.
As illustrated in the later part of this paper, such controller
does dampen the load at the drivetrain eigenfrequency, but
induces additional load at another frequency location. The
proposed controller, however, injects additional inertia through
the generator torque to temporarily shift the eigenfrequency of
the drivetrain only when it passes through its inherent resonant
region. Beyond the resonance, no compensating torque is
required and the maximum power capture controller runs
unchanged during normal operation. Simulations using the
high-order drivetrain model verify the effectiveness of the
proposed virtual inertia controller (VIC) to mitigate resonant
load.
II. W IND T URBINE D ESCRIPTION
Table I summarizes the important properties of the wind
turbine used in the Gearbox Research Collaborative (GRC)
[32] at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL). The GRC wind turbine originally employs two
fixed-speed induction generators. To model the variable-speed
operation, the WTG is modeled using a DFIG, shown in
Fig. 2. In this paper, an average model of the AC / DC / AC
converter is used, in which the power electronic devices
are replaced by controlled current sources. The induction
generator model is based on a commercial wind turbine of
the same rating available in the market. Table II summarizes
the key parameters of the generator and the converter, which
are used to build the variable-speed WTG model in the
Simscape/SimPowerSystems environment [30]. The drivetrain
of this GRC turbine is adopted in this paper to build a dynamic
drivetrain model and to design the controller to mitigate the
resonant load.
Fig. 3 shows the steady-state speed and power character-
istics of this turbine using the DFIG. As shown from the
GIRSANG et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL TO MITIGATE RESONANT LOAD
TABLE II
PARAMETERS OF THE 750-kW DFIG
Fig. 3. Speed and power characteristics of the NREL 750-kW GRC turbine.
power curve, the output power of the variable-speed WTG
is controlled to track the maximum power coefficient between
the wind speed of 3 and 11.7 m/s, while maintaining a constant
pitch angle at its optimum (i.e., −3.5° for this turbine). Once
the wind speed increases above 11.7 m/s, the pitch controller
(not shown in this paper) is activated to limit the rotor
rotational speed at its rated value. Power converters are used
to control the output power of the WTG, whereas the pitch
controller regulates constant generator speed and keeps the
mechanical stresses on the wind turbine structure within the
design limits. The linear relationship between the rotor and
wind speed of this turbine is shown in Fig. 3. In variable-
speed operation, the rotor speed ωrot is proportional to the
wind speed Vw
λopt Vw
ωrot = (1)
Rrot
where λopt is the desired optimum tip-speed ratio and Rrot is
the rotor radius. Despite not being apparent in the steady-state
characteristic shown in Fig. 3, the wind turbine may experience
resonant excitations at certain operating rotor speeds. The
resonance causes undesired fluctuations in the transmitted
torque, resulting in large fatigue loads. Controllers, such as the
one presented in this paper, can be designed and implemented
to mitigate or prevent the resonant loads and hence to preserve
the design life of the drivetrain.
279
Fig. 4. Modular drivetrain configuration of wind turbine.
Fig. 5. Two-mass model of wind turbine drivetrain.
III. D RIVETRAIN M ODEL
This paper focuses on a commonly used modular drivetrain
configuration in operating wind turbines [8]. Fig. 4 shows
the building blocks of the configuration. The GRC multistage
gearbox consists of a planetary gear stage and two parallel
gear stages, with two intermediate shafts.
Fig. 5 shows the configuration of the two-mass model
commonly used to model the dynamics of drivetrains in wind
turbine aeroelastic tools, such as FAST [1]. Inputs into this
model are the five parameters: Jrot , kd , cd , N, and Jgen . This
simple model lumps the rotor (i.e., the hub and blades) into
an inertial body and the rest of the drivetrain as another one.
Jrot and Jgen are, respectively, the inertia of the rotor and
generator, θrot and θgen are, respectively, the angular position
of the rotor and generator. kd and cd are, respectively, the
equivalent torsional stiffness and damping of the drivetrain,
and N is the overall gear ratio. Due to the low degrees
of freedom considered in this model, it is very limited in
describing various drivetrain configurations and its complex
dynamics. Previous study has also highlighted incomplete and
inaccurate prediction of eigenfrequencies using the two-mass
model [29]. Accurate prediction of the drivetrain eigenfrequen-
cies is imperative to design effective controllers that mitigate
the resonant load.
Thus, a higher fidelity model based on lumped parameter
approach is adopted in this paper to model the drivetrain.
Lumped, or discrete, parameter approach models a mechanical
system as concentrated masses, springs, dampers, and point
forces or torques. Each mass is characterized by finite number
of degrees of freedom. Only the torsional degree of freedom
is considered in this paper. Thus, each shaft is modeled as
an ideal massless torsional spring and each gear is modeled
as an inertial body. Gear transmission error exists within
the gearbox. This error is defined as the difference between
280 IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 1, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2013
Fig. 6. (a) Parallel gear stage, (b) dynamic model representation, and
(c) model representation in Simscape/SimDriveline.
Fig. 7. Planetary gear set with three planet gears.
the actual and ideal angular positions of the rotating gear,
which is primarily caused by the gear elastic deformation.
This phenomenon contributes to the definition of gear meshing
stiffness [33]–[37], which plays an important part in the
dynamics of the meshing gears.
In this paper, a purely torsional model of the gear-
box with constant meshing stiffness is built in the Sim-
scape/SimDriveline environment. The model development and
analysis of both planetary and parallel gear stages are briefly
discussed in the following sections. The development and
simulations of this drivetrain model are discussed in detail
in [31].
A. Parallel Gear Stage
Fig. 6(a) shows a parallel gear set, which is a torque reducer,
commonly employed in wind turbine drivetrains. Fig. 6(b) rep-
resents its flexible equivalent, in which the constant meshing
stiffness acts along the line of action of the meshing gears.
This stiffness kmesh , with respect to the driving (i.e., input)
gear, can be represented as [6]
kmesh = kgear (rb1 cos β)2
where the gear tooth stiffness kgear can be determined accord-
ing to international standards [38], [39].
B. Planetary Gear Stage
Fig. 7 shows a planetary gear set with three planet gears,
which is the configuration installed in the GRC drivetrain.
Fig. 8. Torsional model of planetary gear stage with M planet gears in
Simscape/SimDriveline.
TABLE III
E IGENFREQUENCIES OF D RIVE T RAIN W ITH
T ORSIONAL G EARBOX M ODEL
The rotational input enters from the carrier of the planetary
gear stage, which provides rotational motion through the planet
gears, and finally to the sun gear. The ring gear is modeled to
have flexible coupling with the gear housing. Meshing stiffness
between each planet–ring gear pair and planet–sun gear pair
can be modeled similar to that of a parallel gear set using
(2), in each of which the planetary gear is the driving gear.
Fig. 8 shows a torsional model of a planetary gear set built in
the Simscape/SimDriveline environment. This model can be
adapted for any M equally spaced planet gear set.
Frequency response function analysis can be performed on
the Simscape/SimDriveline drivetrain model to find out the
eigenfrequencies of the drivetrain [31]. Table III summarizes
the eigenfrequencies of the GRC wind turbine drivetrain.
Exciting any of these eigenfrequencies leads to load amplifica-
tion in the drivetrain. This paper takes the resonant excitation
(2) around the first drivetrain eigenfrequency as a case study.
C. Campbell Diagram
A source of harmonic excitation that can induce the drive-
train resonance is the blade passing frequency and its harmon-
ics. This excitation occurs due to the aerodynamic interaction
each time a blade passes in front of the tower (i.e., the tower
GIRSANG et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL TO MITIGATE RESONANT LOAD
Fig. 9. Campbell diagram of the GRC drivetrain with respect to the blade
passing frequency and its harmonics.
shadow effect). The i th harmonic of blade passing frequency
is dependent on the rotor rotational frequency f rot as
f b,i = i m f rot , i = 1, 2, 3, ...
where m is the number of blades (i.e., m = 3 for this turbine).
Fig. 9 shows inclined lines, which are the variation of the
blade passing frequency and its harmonics as a function of
the rotor speed. The shaded region shows the operational
speed range of the turbine. The red dotted horizontal line at
2.24 Hz shows the first drivetrain eigenfrequency. Intersection
between this horizontal line and any of the inclined lines shows
the occurrence of resonance at the corresponding rotor speed.
Point R highlights a resonance due to the second harmonics of
the blade passing frequency at 22.4 revolutions/minute (r/m).
The higher drivetrain eigenfrequencies will only intersect
with very high harmonics of the blade passing frequency,
which have very small excitation energy. Therefore, only the
first eigenfrequency is investigated in this paper.
IV. C ONTROLLER F ORMULATIONS
The drivetrain can experience resonance at a particular
operating speed due to the excitation that matches its first
eigenfrequency. To prevent excessive loads due to such res-
onance, a novel control method, which is based on a virtual
inertia concept, is formulated in this section. Performance of
the proposed controller will be compared against a baseline
stress damper controller (SDC), which is also formulated in
this section. Both controllers aim to introduce a compensating
torque τcomp to mitigate the resonant load
2
τem = kopt ωrot + τcomp
where τem is the electromagnetic torque from the genera-
2 is for maximum
tor. The generator torque law of kopt ωrot
aerodynamic power capture. Fig. 10 shows the control dia-
gram of the rotor side converter of the DFIG. The reference
ref using (4) can be achieved by
electromagnetic torque τem
regulating the rotor current through the current controller,
which takes measurements from both the rotor and stator
sides. As discussed in Section II about the DFIG model,
281
Fig. 10. Control diagram of the DFIG rotor side converter to regulate the
generator torque.
(3)
Fig. 11. Schematic implementation of the SDC.
the current controller is implemented as controlled current
sources, which deliver the required currents. Different use
of the two controllers in power converters to manipulate the
compensating torque is discussed as follows.
A. Baseline SDC
The baseline SDC was first introduced in [19] and adopted
by researchers in various aspects of wind turbine operations
[20]–[27]. The controller manipulates the generator torque to
provide additional damping at a certain frequency by feeding
the generator (or rotor) speed measurement through a BPF of
a form
2ζ ωs
H (s) = G 2 (5)
s + 2ζ ωs + ω2
where G is the feedback gain. In this paper, ζ = 0.25 (i.e.,
a narrow bandwidth) was chosen and ω is tuned to the first
eigenfrequency of the drivetrain. Fig. 11 shows the schematic
implementation of the SDC. The ωrot,opt is the optimum
rotor speed that ensures maximum aerodynamic power capture
according to (1).
B. Virtual Inertia Controller
(4) The eigenfrequencies are dependent on the inertia of a
system. The equation of motion of drivetrain with respect
to the turbine rotor side (i.e., the low-speed side) can be
expressed as
Jtot ω̇rot = τaero − Nτem (6)
where Jtot is the total effective inertia of the drivetrain and N
is the overall gear ratio. By defining the generator electromag-
netic torque τem as in (4) and setting the compensating torque
282 IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 1, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2013
Fig. 12. Schematic implementation of the VIC.
τcomp as
τcomp = −J ω̇rot .
The compensating torque τcomp now injects additional virtual
inertia −J ω̇rot into the drivetrain. This is to be done only
if the drivetrain passes through its inherent resonant region.
In doing so, the controller temporarily shifts the closed-loop
eigenfrequency of the system and thus avoids the resonance.
Beyond the characteristic resonant region, there is no compen-
sating torque τcomp is required. In other words, the maximum
power capture, which is implemented as the τem = kopt ωrot 2 in
the DFIG WTG, is kept intact during normal operation.
Fig. 12 shows the schematic implementation of the com-
pensating torque of VIC. The unity gain BPF of VIC is tuned
according to (5). It is important to note that herein the BPF is
used to check whether there is any excitation at the frequency
of interest (i.e., the first drivetrain eigenfrequency). Logic is
implemented to check the magnitude of the filter output and
decide that the system is under resonant if the magnitude
exceeds certain threshold. In this paper, hysteresis logic is
implemented to decide whether to add zero, medium, or high
virtual inertia J . The tuning of the SDC and VIC gains
(i.e., G and J , respectively) are discussed in the following
section.
V. I NTEGRATION OF D RIVETRAIN M ODEL W ITH FAST
Fig. 13 shows the proposed strategy to integrate the
described drivetrain models with the FAST aeroelastic tool,
instead of using its inherent two-mass model. Simulations
using this integrated model were conducted in the Simulink
environment. The results are presented in the following
section.
The structural properties of the GRC turbine as well as
the wind excitations are loaded into the FAST Simulink
block [1]. For simplicity, the flexible modes of the other
turbine components modeled inside FAST, such as those of the
blades and tower, are not depicted in the schematic diagram
shown in Fig. 13. In FAST, the two-mass drivetrain model
is reduced to a single-mass model, consisting solely of the
rotor and a massless rigid shaft (as shown in the bottom part
of Fig. 13). This is done by deactivating the flexibility of
the drivetrain (i.e., simulating rigid transmission) and setting
the gear ratio and the generator inertia to unity and zero,
respectively. The rotor equation of motion can be expressed as
Jrot αrot = τaero − τopp .
FAST internally calculates the input aerodynamic torque
τaero from the defined wind profile, but does not provide this
(7)
Fig. 13. Proposed schematic diagram of integrating the Simscape drivetrain
model into the FAST aeroelastic tool.
torque as an output. However, as the rotor acceleration αrot =
ω̇rot is an available FAST output, the aerodynamic torque
τaero can be reconstructed using (8) to be one of the inputs
to the external drivetrain model. In this process, the rotor
inertia Jrot is assumed constant and replicated in the external
SimDriveline model. The rotor inertia is connected to the
flexible low-speed shaft, the purely torsional gearbox model,
the high-speed shaft, and the generator inertia. For general
application, the electrical machine and grid model will take
the generator speed and provide the generator electromagnetic
torque to the drivetrain. This electrical machine and grid model
is built using the SimPowerSystems, based on the adopted
DFIG in Table II. In this paper, instead of taking the generator
speed, the model takes other variables, as shown in Fig. 10.
The two controllers considered in this paper are incorporated
inside the SimPowerSystems model.
The rotor opposing torque τopp is required as an input to the
FAST drivetrain model as well as to calculate the aerodynamic
torque τaero . In SimDriveline, this rotor opposing torque can
be retrieved using the torque sensor element behind the rotor
inertia element. In general, torque, velocity, and angular-
position sensor elements can be placed flexibly within the
SimDriveline model to monitor the response of the drivetrain
under various load conditions.
VI. S IMULATION R ESULTS
Simulations using this integrated model under different
wind profiles were performed to verify the effectiveness of
the proposed VIC and to compare its performance with the
baseline SDC.
The simulation comprises of three tests. The first test aims
to investigate the performance of the controllers under a
wide frequency range as well as to tune both controllers
to facilitate the comparison between the two. In this first
test, the simulation was performed using a hypothetical sinu-
soidal wind speed input with varying frequency. The wind
(8)
speed input has average wind speed of 9 m/s and ampli-
tude of 1 m/s. Initialization for 50 s with constant wind
speed input of 9 m/s was performed to allow the turbine
GIRSANG et al.: MODELING AND CONTROL TO MITIGATE RESONANT LOAD
Fig. 14. Sinusoidal wind excitation at varying frequency.
Fig. 15. Comparison of transmitted drivetrain load under sinusoidal wind
excitation: (a) without controller and with VIC, (b) without controller and
with SDC, and (c) with SDC and VIC.
to reach steady-state condition before the harmonic exci-
tation was applied. The frequency of excitation increases
step by step from 0.6 to 3 Hz with an increment of
0.2 Hz. Each harmonic excitation lasts for 40 s. Fig. 14
shows the first 120 s of this sinusoidal wind excitation at
0.6 and 0.8 Hz.
Fig. 15 shows the transmitted torque through the drivetrain
in term of the rotor opposing torque τopp. It is important to
note that the loads transmitted through other shafts within the
drivetrain have similar profiles as the one shown in Fig. 15.
As expected, a large fluctuation in the drivetrain load occurs
at the sinusoidal wind excitation of 2.2 Hz (i.e., between 370
and 410 s), which is close to the first drivetrain eigenfrequency
in Table III. To facilitate a fair comparison, the gain G of
SDC and the high J of VIC were tuned to achieve similar
performance in mitigating the loads during resonance, as
shown in Fig. 15(c). To enhance the performance of VIC in the
vicinity of resonance, a medium J, defined to be one-third
of the high J, is injected to the drivetrain. For this turbine,
the virtual inertia J takes values of 0.05% and 0.15% of
283
Fig. 16. Drivetrain responses under constant wind speed of 9 m/s: (a) turbine
rotor speed, (b) generator output power, and (c) drivetrain torsional load.
the drivetrain total effective inertia. These defined gains were
used for subsequent simulations.
Under the harmonic wind excitations, both controllers are
shown to be effective in mitigating the resonant loads at
2.2 Hz. However, the SDC is shown to induce additional load
at another frequency location of 1.8 Hz, which is the damped
natural frequency. This is a major drawback as the drivetrain
load at this condition becomes larger than that of without any
controller, as shown in Fig. 15(b). On the contrary, as shown
in Fig. 15(a), the proposed VIC specifically mitigates resonant
load only around the eigenfrequency and does not amplify the
response at other frequency locations.
The other two tests illustrate scenarios in which the exces-
sive load can happen under constant wind speed profiles.
Fig. 16 shows the simulation results under constant wind
speed of 9 m/s. The rotational speed of the wind turbine
rotor was initialized to be 22.1 r/m. Fig. 16(a) shows the
rotor speed response that increases to reach the optimum
rotor speed that ensures maximum capture of the aerodynamic
power. The plot lines from the three cases (i.e., without any
controllers as well as with SDC and VIC) superimpose each
other that virtually only one line is visible. The maximum
power capture is verified in Fig. 16(b), which shows the same
average in the generator output power from the three cases.
However, according to the Campbell diagram in Fig. 9, the
wind turbine drivetrain is predicted to undergo resonance due
to the second harmonic of the blade passing frequency at
the rotor speed of approximately 22.5 r/m. The prediction
is verified as large fatigue loads are transmitted within the
drivetrain if no controller is being implemented, as shown
in Fig. 16(c). Both SDC and VIC are shown to effectively
reduce the fluctuations in the drivetrain load. Furthermore,
the controllers introduce slight improvement in the generator
output power variation.
284 IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 1, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2013
Fig. 17. Drivetrain responses under constant wind speed of 7.2 m/s: (a)
turbine rotor speed, (b) generator output power, and (c) drivetrain torsional
load.
The third test aims to evaluate and compare the performance
of the two controllers at different operating wind speed. Fig. 17
shows the simulation results under constant wind speed of
7.2 m/s. The rotor speed was again initialized to be 22.1 r/m.
The variable-speed turbine, under the three cases, is shown
in Fig. 17(a) to successfully track the changing wind speed to
maximize the aerodynamic power capture. However, this time,
the drivetrain with SDC has the largest fatigue load, as shown
in Fig. 17(c). Therefore, if the turbine spends sufficiently
long period at the wind speed of around 7.2 m/s, the effect
of installing SDC on a variable-speed wind turbine can be
detrimental. On contrary, the VIC results in lower transmitted
loads, with slightly lower power fluctuation, as shown in
Fig. 17(b). It occurs as this condition is still recognized
as around the inherent resonant region. Thus, the controller
injects a medium additional inertia J to mitigate the resonant
loads.
VII. C ONCLUSION
The capability of the FAST aeroelastic wind turbine code
has been enhanced through integration of a dynamic model of
a drivetrain built using Simscape in the MATLAB/Simulink
environment. In this paper, the model is used to accurately
predict the possible resonant excitations that can induce large
fatigue loads in a variable-speed turbine. To mitigate such
load, this paper proposes a use of novel controller in the
power converters to manipulate the eigenfrequency of the wind
turbine drivetrain by introducing additional virtual inertia in
the compensating torque. The VIC shifts the eigenfrequency of
the system only when the drivetrain passes through its inherent
resonance. Beyond the characteristic resonant region, there
is no compensating torque required and traditional maximum
power capture controller runs unchanged during normal opera-
tion. This is of importance as the baseline SDC has a drawback
of inducing additional load at another operating condition. The
simulation results show the effectiveness of the VIC, which
performs better under the range of tested wind speed and
frequency excitation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank G. Mandic for providing
the FAST input files to model and simulate the GRC wind
turbine.
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Irving P. Girsang (S’12) received the B.E. degree
in mechanical engineering from Nanyang Techno-
logical University (NTU), Singapore, in 2011. He
is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree with the
School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
and Energy Research Institute, NTU. His study is
funded by the National Research Foundation (Clean
Energy) Scholarship, administered by the Energy
Innovation Programme Office Singapore.
He was a Visiting Student Researcher with the
National Wind Technology Center, Boulder, CO,
USA, from 2012 to 2012. His current research interests include modeling
and control for load mitigation of wind turbine drivetrain.
285
Jaspreet S. Dhupia (M’13) received the B.Tech.
degree in mechanical engineering from the Indian
Institute of Technology-Delhi, Delhi, India, in 2001,
and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engi-
neering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor,
MI, USA, in 2004 and 2007, respectively.
He has been an Assistant Professor with Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, since 2008,
where he is leading a research group engaged
in modeling, monitoring, and controls of electro-
mechanical drivetrains. He is the author of more than
25 peer-reviewed articles.
Prof. Dhupia has been a member of ASME since 2006. He has served
in organizing committees from the IEEE/ASME International Conference
on Advanced Intelligent Mechatronics in 2013 and the American Control
Conference in 2014.
Eduard Muljadi (M’82–SM’94–F’10) received the
Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the
University of Wisconsin at Madison, Madison, WI,
USA.
He was with California State University at Fresno,
Fresno, CA, USA, from 1988 to 1992. In 1992,
he joined the National Renewable Energy Labora-
tory, Golden, CO, USA. He holds two patents in
power conversion for renewable energy. His current
research interests include electric machines, power
electronics, and power systems in general with an
emphasis on renewable energy applications.
Dr. Muljadi is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and Sigma Xi, and an Editor
of the IEEE T RANSACTIONS ON E NERGY C ONVERSION. He is involved
in the activities of the IEEE Industry Application Society (IAS), the Power
Electronics Society, and the Power and Energy Society (PES). He is currently
a member of various committees of the IAS, and a member of the Working
Group on Renewable Technologies and the Task Force on Dynamic Perfor-
mance of Wind Power Generation, PES.
Mohit Singh (M’11) received the M.S. and Ph.D.
degrees in electrical engineering from the University
of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA, in 2007 and
2011, respectively.
He is a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the National
Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, USA,
on transmission and grid integration of renewable
energy. His research is focused on dynamic model-
ing of wind turbine generators. His current research
interests include modeling and testing various appli-
cations of wind turbine generators and other renew-
able energy resources.
Dr. Singh is involved in the activities of the IEEE Power and Energy Society.
286 IEEE JOURNAL OF EMERGING AND SELECTED TOPICS IN POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 1, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2013
Jason Jonkman received the Ph.D. degree in
aerospace engineering sciences from the University
of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA, the M.S. degree in
mechanical engineering from Colorado State Univer-
sity, Fort Collins, CO, USA, and the B.S.E. degree in
mechanical engineering from Dordt College, Sioux
Center, IA, USA.
He joined the National Renewable Energy Lab-
oratory (NREL), Golden, CO, USA, in 2000, and
is the Lead Developer of the FAST and FAST-to-
ADAMS preprocessor computer simulation software
for modeling the dynamic response of land- and offshore-based wind turbines.
He provides technical support to designers, consultants, and researchers
throughout the wind energy industry. He has performed studies to verify and
validate the simulation software, has published many papers on wind turbine
dynamics, and assisted in the certification of wind turbine design loads. He is
currently leading the wind turbine dynamics model development activities at
NREL. Prior to joining NREL, he was a Researcher with the DOE’s Industrial
Assessment Center, Colorado State University, and a Tool Design Engineer
with the Commercial Airplane Division of Boeing.
Dr. Jonkman is a Co-Chair of an IEA research annex on developing
and verifying simulation models for fixed bottom and floating offshore wind
energy concepts. He is the Principle Investigator for a Department of Energy-
funded project to improve the modeling of offshore floating wind turbine
system dynamics and is providing guidance to several projects aimed at
validating these models. He is the U.S. representative on the IEC working
group to develop an international standard for the design of offshore floating
wind turbines.