Feasibility and Assessment of Real Time Monitoring Systems for Smart Structural Control of Wind Turbines

A semi-active (SA) control strategy has been proposed by the authors in the recent years to mitigate structural demand to high wind turbines against strong wind loads. Numerical as well as experimental analyses shown it is really promising and potentially useful to owners who want to optimize costs of realization and installation of such huge structures. The application to real cases of this technique, since based on the use of variable dissipative devices, requires the tower is instrumented for real time monitoring of structural response of the tower. This allows the control algorithm to make the decision about the optimal calibration, moment by moment, of the variable devices. Making reliable high frequency measurements of the horizontal displacement of points placed at a height of tens of meters can be not so trivial. With the aim of evaluating the efficiency and feasibility of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-based systems for structural control of wind turbines, this paper try to obtain insight into the characteristics (receiver type, type of observables, sampling data rate) and data processing techniques that can make the GNSS useful for such application. Finally, numerical investigations referred to a case study allow to discuss how the features of the measurement system may affect the performance of the proposed SA technique in reducing structural demand due to wind induced vibrations.