Abstract
Hydrostatic transmissions are commonly used in heavy-duty equipment for their design flexibility and superior power density. Compared to a conventional wind turbine transmission, a hydrostatic transmission (HST) is a lighter, more reliable, cheaper, continuously variable alternative for a wind turbine. In this paper, for the first time, a validated dynamical model and controlled experiment have been used to analyze the performance of a hydrostatic transmission with a fixeddisplacement pump and a variable-displacement motor for community wind turbines. From the dynamics of the HST, a pressure control strategy is designed to maximize the power capture. A hardware-in-the-loop simulation is developed to experimentally validate the performance and efficiency of the HST drive train control in a 60 kW virtual wind turbine environment. The HST turbine is extensively evaluated under steady and time-varying wind on a state-of-the-art power regenerative hydrostatic dynamometer. The proposed controller tracks the optimal tip-speed ratio to maximize power capture.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 376 |
| Journal | Energies |
| Volume | 15 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jan 1 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Funding: National Science Foundation (NSF) grant #1634396.
Funding Information:
National Science Foundation (NSF) grant #1634396.We are thankful to other graduate students in our lab for helping us in setting up the experiments. We also thank Eaton, Linde, Danfoss, Bosch Rexroth, Flo-tech, and ExxonMobil for donating the components for the dynamometer.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
Keywords
- Dynamics and control
- Hardware-in-the-loop
- Hydrostatic transmission
- Maximum power point tracking
- Wind turbine
