Multi-Degree-of-Freedom Load Reproduction by Electrohydraulic Digital-Servo Loading for Wind Turbine Drivetrain

Many drivetrain testing facilities have been built to reproduce multi-degree-of-freedom loads, thus simulating real wind conditions for evaluations of the reliability and durability of turbine subsystems. In this paper, the electrohydraulic schemes for the non-torque loading of a wind turbine's drivetrain test benches are first analyzed. To deal with the control inaccuracy caused by the drastically increasing loading force, along with the rapid development of large-scale wind turbines, a multi-cylinder electrohydraulic digital-servo loading (MEDSL) technology is proposed. A novel electrohydraulic digital-servo cylinders group is designed. The proposed MEDSL can provide continuous and accurate load recurrence under wider wind conditions by varying the operational area of the cylinders group. Moreover, a sliding mode controller (SMC) is designed to realize the large dynamic loading of the MEDSL system. By comparing the SMC to a traditional PID controller in a servo-valve controlled cylinder, both simulation and experiment results proved the advantage of the proposed SMC. Accordingly, extensive experiments with a 4-cylinder case were carried out on a real full-loading bench using the SMC-based MEDSL device. The excellent tracking performance under complicated signals that represent the real wind loads demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed MEDSL technology and the SMC method.