Advanced wind turbine control systems

Supervisors: Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian, Professor Lin Ma and Professor Derek Ingham.

Wind turbine control is necessary to ensure low maintenance costs and efficient performance. The control system also guarantees safe operation, optimises power output, and ensures long structural life. Turbine rotational speed and the generator speed are two key areas that you must control for power limitation and optimisation.

This project will focus on the control strategies/techniques for wind turbine control systems of small vertical axis wind turbines for the built environment in urban, suburban and remote areas. The work will be built on and closely linked to existing research on the aerodynamics of the wind turbines.

Advanced computational fluid dynamics modelling techniques will be employed to analyse the aerodynamic response of the turbine to give critical feedback to the control system. Experimental tests will be part of the investigation. Accurate simulation capability and tools will be developed in order to predict, and subsequently optimise, the performance of the wind turbine.

For further information contact Professor Derek B Ingham (d.ingham@sheffield.ac.uk).