Robust Adaptive Pitch Control of Floating Wind Turbines

In this paper, a modified sliding-mode adaptive controller is derived to achieve stability and output regulation for a class of dynamical systems represented by a non-homogeneous differential equation with unknown time-varying coefficients and unknown force function. In this scheme, the control law is constructed in terms of estimated values for the bounds of the unknown coefficients, where these values are continuously updated by adaptive laws to ensure asymptotic convergence to zero for the output function. The proposed controller is applied to solve the problem of pitch angle regulation for a floating wind turbine with dynamic uncertainty and external disturbances. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the validity of the designed controller to achieve the desired pitch angle for the floating turbine’s body.