Smart Active Vibration Control System of a Wind Turbine Blade Using Piezoelectric Material

Vibration suppression has become one of the major issues in sensitive structures. The active vibration control (AVC) has been widely used in the field of vibration damping in rotary structures. In this article, deriving analytical solution of lateral vibration and active vibration control of a wind turbine (WT) blade are investigated. First, a new semi-analytical solution is developed to obtain the lateral deflection of a wind turbine blade under external loadings. We propose a method to map a wind turbine blade to an Euler-Bernoulli beam with the same conditions, in order to find vibration and dynamic responses of the blade by solving analytical vibration solutions of the Euler-Bernoulli beam. Piezoelectric (PZT) material is used in this research as an actuator-sensor to excite the structures and sense the responses. The governing equations of the beam with piezoelectric patches are derived based on the integration of the piezoelectric transducer vibration equations into the vibration equations of the Euler-Bernoulli beam structure. Finite element model of the wind turbine blade with piezoelectric patches is developed. A unique transfer function matrix is derived. The beam structure is projected to the blade by using a unique transfer function matrix which is derived by exciting the structures and achieving responses. The results obtained from the mapping method are compared with the results achieved from the FE model of the blade. A satisfying agreement has been observed between the results. Next, in order to suppress the transverse vibration of the wind turbine blade, piezoelectric ceramic patches are used as an actuator in combination with linear quadratic regulator (LQR) control system. The obtained results show that the proposed smart control system contains PZT patches and LQR control system is able to efficiently suppress lateral vibration.