Engineers designing yaw and pitch actuators for wind turbines need to take into account many of the other components in the overall system to produce an optimized design. Selecting a technology requires doing tradeoff studies in early stages to determine which will provide enough force or torque while drawing the least power. The actuator must be developed together with the control systems, and there may be multiple control systems that must interact with the actuation system. For the development process to be efficient, engineers must have the ability to determine which details will be included in the simulation and which will be neglected. The models that they produce must be realistic and reusable.

The model of a complete wind turbine (including mechanical, electrical and hydraulic systems) will be used to show:

• How to use simulation to determine detailed, up-to-date requirements based on the overall system design
• How to develop electrical and hydraulic actuation systems based on those requirements
• How to define custom, reusable components using the Simscape language
• How to use optimization algorithms and measurement data to automatically determine realistic parameter values

These points will be illustrated with demonstrations using the model and the simulation software. Experience with MATLAB and Simulink is helpful, but not required to learn from this webinar.

You can download the model used in this webinar from MATLAB Central.