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IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS 1
Adaptive Estimation-Based Leakage Detection for a
Wind Turbine Hydraulic Pitching System
Xin Wu, Yaoyu Li, Member, IEEE, Feng Li, Zhongzhou Yang, and Wei Teng
AbstractOperation and maintenance (OM) cost has con-
tributed a major share in the cost of energy for wind power gener-
ation. Condition monitoring can help reduce the OM cost of wind
turbine. Among the wind turbine components, the fault diagnosis
of the hydraulic pitching system is investigated in this study. The
hydraulic pitching system is critical for energy capture, load re-
duction, and aerodynamic braking. The fault detection of internal
and external leakages in the hydraulic pitching system is studied
in this paper. Based on the dynamic model of the hydraulic pitch-
ing system, an adaptive parameter estimation algorithm has been
developed in order to identify the internal and external leakages
under the time-varying load on the pitch axis. This scheme can
detect and isolate individual faults in spite of their strong coupling
in the hydraulic model. A scale-down setup has been developed as
the hydraulic pitch emulator, with which the proposed method is
veried through experiments. The pitching-axis load input is ob-
tained from simulation of a 1.5-MW variable-speed-variable-pitch
turbine model under turbulent wind proles on the FAST (fatigue,
aerodynamics, structural, and tower) software developed by the
National Renewable Energy Laboratory. With the experimental
data, the leakage and leakage coefcients can be predicted via the
proposed method with good performance.
Index TermsAdaptive estimation, hydraulic systems, leak de-
tection, wind energy.
I. INTRODUCTION
W
IND power has become the worlds fastest growing re-
newable energy source. The installed wind power ca-
pacity world wide has exceeded 160 GW. The U.S. targets 20%
wind-based electricity generation, i.e., over 300 GW, by 2030.
As wind power is growing toward a major utility source, reduc-
ing the cost of energy (COE) becomes a critical issue to make
wind power competitive to conventional sources [1].
A major portion of the COE for wind power generation is the
relatively high cost for operation and maintenance (OM). Wind
turbines are hard-to-access structures, and they are often lo-
Manuscript received August 12, 2010; revised February 18, 2011; accepted
April 2, 2011. Recommended by Technical Editor Y. Li. This work was sup-
ported in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
of China.
X. Wu and W. Teng are with the School of Energy, Power and Mechanical
Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing 102206, China
(e-mail: wuxincn@gmail.com; tengw@ncepu.edu.cn).
Y. Li and Z. Yang are with the Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI 53211 USA (e-mail: yyli@uwm.edu;
yang262@uwm.edu).
F. Li is with the School of Mechanical Engineering, University of Science
and Technology, Beijing 100083, China (e-mail: bkdlifeng@ustb.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TMECH.2011.2142400
cated in remote areas. These factors alone increase the OM cost
for wind power systems. Also, poor reliability directly reduces
availability of wind power due to the turbine downtime [1]. The
OM cost for an offshore wind turbine is estimated to be 20%
25% of the total income [1], [2]. Condition monitoring and fault
diagnosis of wind turbines has, thus, greater benet for such sit-
uations. In addition, wind turbine repair and maintenance that
require extensive usage of cranes and lifting equipment create
a highly capital-intensive operation as well as delayed services
due to lack of crane availability and needs for optimal weather
conditions. Also, the trend that has currently emerged to dampen
prospects is lack of personnel available to performthe consistent
OM required to keep turbines functioning and efcient.
A blade pitch control system is critical for turbine opera-
tion, as pitching is an important actuation for enhancing energy
capture, mitigating operational load, stalling and aerodynamic
braking [3][6]. Under very strong wind, in particular, it is used
as aerodynamic brake to stop the turbine. Avoiding pitching
failure is thus important for system operation and safety. Pitch-
ing motion is typically driven by hydraulic actuators or electric
motors. The hydraulic pitching system is advantageous in large
stiffness, little backlash, and higher reliability. Electric motor
driven pitching systems have larger bandwidth, which is more
desirable for faster actions such as individual pitching, however,
suffering from smaller stiffness, quicker wear in transmission,
and larger backlash. For large to extreme aerodynamic load-
ing situations, hydraulic systems are considered more fail-safe.
Hydraulic actuation system failure takes a remarkable portion
among different factors of wind turbine failure. For the opera-
tion under extreme wind, failure of hydraulic pitching may lead
to catastrophic failure of the whole turbine, which must be pre-
vented from. Fault detection of the hydraulic pitching system is
critical for protecting turbine under windy operation as turbine
stalling is a critical measure of protecting wind turbine [1].
Leakage is a critical fault for hydraulic systems, which may
reduce the effective stiffness and efciency. As consequence,
the control performance and stability robustness can be dramat-
ically undermined. There are two kinds of leakages in hydraulic
systems: external leakage in hose and connector, and internal
(cross-port) leakage in piston seal. The external leakage may
cause a sluggish response of the hydraulic system. The internal
leakage happens when the uid crosses the cylinder piston seal
that closes the gap between the moving piston and the cylin-
der. As the internal leakage increases, the cylinder may lose the
ability to manipulate the load [12].
Fault diagnosis of hydraulic control systems has been studied
for many other industrial applications, with both data-driven and
model-based approaches. For the data-driven fault detection,
1083-4435/$26.00 2011 IEEE
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2 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS
the prior knowledge about the faulty behavior on the hydraulic
systemis needed. Daley and Wang [7] proposed a simple scheme
based on articial neural networks (ANN) for detecting and
diagnosing faults in the uid power systems. The ANN is rst
trained on a healthy system to provide a detection signal of
small amplitude when the system operates normally. With the
knowledge of the effects of some known faults on this signal,
a diagnostic vector is constructed to determine the location and
size of all similar faults. Watton and Kwon [8] developed an
ANN method for identifying the behavior of uid power control
systems with frequency-rich input excitation. Seong et al. [9]
developed a back propagation ANN method for detecting and
diagnosing a disk wear failure and a foreign object failure among
the various failure and modes of check valves. Crowther et
al. [10] presented a neural network approach for fault diagnosis
of the hydraulic system based on the classication of surfaces
in system output vector space. Chen et al. [11] developed a new
ANNapproach to the fault diagnosis of a water hydraulic system
based on the wavelet analysis of a vibration signal.
Model-based approach has been investigated, based on the
nonlinear dynamic models for hydraulic systems. An and
Sepehri [12] presented the application of extended Kalman lter
in order to identify internal- and external-leakage faults, which
are assumed to occur individually, in hydraulic actuators. As a
combination of ANN (data-driven) and model-based methods,
Shi et al. [13] developed a gray-box model, aiming to provide
accurate and robust fault detection for electrohydraulic control
systems. Gayaka and Yao [14] used an adaptive robust approach
for fault detection and accommodation in electrohydraulic sys-
tems. Du [15] proposed a health monitoring method for the
hydraulic system through the adaptive parameter estimation of
effective bulk modulus and leakage coefcient in the system.
It is also worthwhile to mention that the adaptive control
methods are applied on the hydraulic systemwidely. Papadopou-
los et al. [16] focused on the modeling, parameter estimation,
and control for a heavy-duty electrohydraulic manipulator of a
harvester machine. Mohanty and Yao [17] developed an inte-
grated directindirect adaptive robust control algorithm for an
electrohydraulic manipulator with unknown valve dead band to
improve the achievable output-tracking performance. Kaddissi
et al. [18] studied the real-time position control of an electrohy-
draulic system using indirect adaptive backstepping.
The hydraulic pitching systems for the modern utility wind
turbines feature variable rotor speed, pitch angles, and torque
loads on the pitch axis. Also, turbulence nature of wind, wind
shear, and wake lead to strongly time varying and unsteady
loads. Such complexity determines that a good fault diagnosis
solution for the hydraulic pitch system should work well under
transient and unsteady operation and load, in addition to steady-
state operation and load.
This study is focused on the faults of internal and external
leakages for the hydraulic pitching system. Considering the ef-
fect of the time-varying load on the hydraulic system, a model-
based adaptive parameter estimation algorithm has been devel-
oped to identify the internal and external leakages. Comparing
with aforementioned estimation methods, this scheme can, not
only detect, but also isolate individual leakages in spite of their
Fig. 1. Hydraulic actuation system for the wind turbine blade pitching mech-
anism [6], [19].
coupled relationship in the hydraulic model, which is advanta-
geous for the maintenance practice. The proposed methods are
veried through the experiments performed on a scale-down
hydraulic pitching emulator. The aerodynamic loading on the
pitching axis is emulated by the disturbance load provided by
an additional hydraulic cylinder. The pitching load is obtained
from the simulation of a 1.5-MW variable-speed variable-pitch
turbine model under turbulent winds on the FAST(fatigue, aero-
dynamics, structural, and tower) software developed by the Na-
tional Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. The
model-based adaptive leakage-detection algorithmis then intro-
duced in Section II. Section III describes the hydraulic pitching
emulator and fault diagnosis oriented test. Section IV presents
the experimental results for the estimation of internal and exter-
nal leakages in the hydraulic cylinder under different wind speed
and different levels of coupled internal and external leakages.
Section V concludes this paper with discussion.
II. ADAPTIVE PARAMETER ESTIMATION FOR HYDRAULIC
PITCHING SYSTEMS
The schematic of a typical hydraulic pitching systemis shown
in Fig. 1.
Similar to many other hydraulic actuation systems, the system
consists of a uid tank, a hydraulic pump, an electrohydraulic
proportional directional valve, a relief valve, a hydraulic cylin-
der. The pitching motion is realized with a slider-crank mech-
anism by attaching the piston of cylinder to the pitching blade
shaft via a rigid bar [6], [19].
The dynamic model of hydraulic pitching cylinder is given
by [20], [21]

Q
A
=
A
A
x
p

P
A
+ A
A
x
p
+ C
ip
(P
A
P
B
) + C
epA
P
A
Q
B
=
A
B
(L x
p
)

P
B
A
B
x
p
C
ip
(P
A
P
B
)+C
epB
P
B
(1)
F = P
A
A
A
P
B
A
B
m x
p
(2)
where P denotes chamber pressure, subscripts A and B
denote chambers A and B, respectively, C
ip
denotes the
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WU et al.: ADAPTIVE ESTIMATION-BASED LEAKAGE DETECTION FOR A WIND TURBINE HYDRAULIC PITCHING SYSTEM 3
internal-leakage coefcient in the piston, C
epA
denotes the ex-
ternal leakage at chamber A, C
epB
denotes the external leakage
at chamber B,
e
denotes the effective bulk modulus, x
p
denotes
the piston position, Q denotes the hydraulic uid ow rate in
the circuit, A denotes the piston area, and m denotes the piston
mass. F denotes the sum of external load and friction, and for
the particular case of hydraulic pitching system as in this study,
this is governed by the pitching load.
In the following, an adaptive estimation algorithmis proposed
for identifying the leakage-related parameters for fault diagnosis
purpose. The dynamic equations (1) and (2) can be modied into

Q
A
A
A
x
p
=
A
A
x
p

e
dP
A
dt
+ C
ip
(P
A
P
B
) + C
epA
P
A
Q
B
+A
B
x
p
=
A
B
(Lx
p
)

e
dP
B
dt
C
ip
(P
A
P
B
)+C
epB
P
B
P
A
A
A
P
B
A
B
= m x
p
+ F.
(3)
Then, (3) can also be written as [15]

P
L
=
_
Q
A
A
A
x
p
+
Q
B
A
B
(L x
p
)
_

e
P
L

_
1
A
A
x
p
+
1
A
B
(L x
p
)
_

e
C
ip

P
A
A
A
x
p

e
C
epA
+
P
B
A
B
(L x
p
)

e
C
epB

_
1
x
p
+
1
L x
p
_

e
m

_
(P
A
A
A
P
B
A
B
F)dt (4)
where P
L
= P
A
P
B
is the pressure differential across the
piston.
Let

1
=
e
,
2
=
e
C
ip
,
3
=
e
C
epA
;

4
=
e
C
epB
,
5
=

e
m
(5)
f
1
=
Q
A
A
A
x
p
+
Q
B
A
B
(L x
p
)
f
2
= P
L
_
1
A
A
x
p
+
1
A
B
(L x
p
)
_
f
3
=
P
A
A
A
x
p
f
4
=
P
B
A
B
(L x
p
)
f
5
=
_
1
x
p
+
1
L x
p
__
(P
A
A
A
P
B
A
B
F)dt (6)
where
i
(i =1, . . ., 5) are unknown constants in terms of system
parameters, including the effective bulk modulus, internal- and
external-leakage coefcients, and the inertia mass. Identication
of
i
would achieve the purpose of detecting leakage and also
the change of bulk modulus (e.g., due to air contamination).
Equation (3) can, thus, be written as [22]

P
L
=
5

i=1

i
f
i
. (7)
An estimation dynamic rule can be established as

P
L
= P
L


P
L
+
5

i=1

i
f
i
(8)
where is a positive constant and represents parameter and
state variable estimation. Subtracting (7) from(8), the estimation
error dynamics is

P
L
= P
L
+
5

i=1

i
f
i
(9)
where P
L
=

P
L
P
L
,
i
=
i

i
(i = 1, ..., 5).
Dene a Lyapunov function as
V =
1
2
P
2
L
+
1
2
5

i=1

2
i
. (10)
The time derivative of (10) is

V = P
L

_
P
L
+
5

i=1

i
f
i
_
+
5

i=1

i

i
(11)
where is a positive constant learning rate.
An adaptive learning rule can be applied to identify the values
of
i
. Let

i
= P
L
f
i
(12a)
i.e.,

1
=


1
= P
L

_
Q
A
A
A
x
p
+
Q
B
A
B
(L x
p
)
_
(12b)

2
=


2
= P
L
P
L

_
1
A
A
x
p
+
1
A
B
(L x
p
)
_
(12c)

3
=


3
= P
L

P
A
A
A
x
p
(12d)

4
=


4
= P
L

P
B
A
B
(L x
p
)
(12e)

5
=


5
= P
L

__
1
x
p
+
1
L x
p
__
(P
A
A
A
P
B
A
B
F)dt
_
.
(12f)
Then,

V = P
2
L
0 (13)
where and are both positive constants.
Notice that f
5
is bounded as
f
5
=
_
1
x
p
+
1
L x
p
__
(P
A
A
A
P
B
A
B
F)dt
=
_
1
x
p
+
1
L x
p
_
(m x
p
). (14)
Load F can be obtained through (3) with the least-squares
estimation method [21], [22]. Since f
i
are all bounded and
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4 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS
Fig. 2. Schematic of hydraulic pitching emulator.
Fig. 3. Flowchart of the hydraulic pitching emulator with the input fromFAST.
P
L
(t) 0 as t , thus
i
0 as t . When P
L
and f
i
are all bounded, the time derivation of V is negative
semidenite [22]. Thus, the adaptive learning rule of (12) can
achieve unbiased estimation for
i
when the input signals (i.e.,
chamber pressure, ow rate, and piston position) satisfy the
persistent excitation condition.
This estimation scheme can detect the change of bulk modu-
lus (e.g., due to the presence of air contamination or change of
uid temperature), internal and external leakage on both sides of
hydraulic cylinder piston. Detection of bulk modulus, internal
and external leakage can, thus, be decoupled, which is conve-
nient for maintenance practice. This study is limited to leakage
detection only, but the method can be easily extended to that
including the change of bulk modulus. This detection scheme
relies on the sensor measurements of piston position, and ow
rate and pressure of chambers in the hydraulic cylinder, which
are available on typical products.
III. HYDRAULIC PITCHING EMULATOR AND LEAKAGE TESTS
A scale-down hydraulic pitching emulator has been built to
conduct experiments for validating the proposed fault detection
scheme. The objectives of the hydraulic pitching emulator are
twofold: 1) emulate the motion of hydraulic pitching and the
dynamic load about the pitching axis under realistic winds; and
Fig. 4. Illustration of the pitching mechanism [6], [19].
Fig. 5. Different kinds of wind speed simulated through FAST.
2) emulate the faults of interest in current stage, i.e., the internal
and external leakages for the hydraulic cylinder.
The schematic of hydraulic pitching emulator is shown in
Fig. 2. It mainly consists of two back-to-back hydraulic cylin-
ders: one is used to emulate an actual hydraulic actuator for a
wind turbine blade pitching system (named as pitching cylin-
der), while the other is used to generate the aerodynamic
loading torque as disturbance to the hydraulic pitching system
(named as load cylinder). The piston of the pitching cylinder
is controlled to follow the pitch angle prole obtained from the
simulation under different wind proles on the FAST software.
The loading cylinder can provide corresponding force output
from the FAST simulation with different cases of wind speed.
The cylinder parameters in the hydraulic emulator are: A
A
=
1.26 10
3
m
2
, A
B
= 0.94 10
3
m
2
, x
p
[0, 0.2] m, and
L = 0.2 m.
Fig. 3 shows the simulation platform for this study and how
the emulated pitching load can be obtained. The NRELs FAST
software models the wind turbine as a combination of rigid and
exible bodies [23]. TurbSimis used to create full eld turbulent
wind les which are input to AeroDyn. AeroDyn is used along-
side FAST to simulate the aerodynamic forces on the turbine
blades and structure. The pitch angles and the pitching load
torque obtained from FAST simulation can be used as reference
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WU et al.: ADAPTIVE ESTIMATION-BASED LEAKAGE DETECTION FOR A WIND TURBINE HYDRAULIC PITCHING SYSTEM 5
Fig. 6. Reference and output of pitching cylinder position and load.
Fig. 7. Estimation of large internal leakage and small chamber A external leakage and leakage coefcients for different wind input proles. (a) Estimation of
internal and chamber A external leakage. (b) Estimation of internal and chamber A external leakage coefcients.
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6 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS
Fig. 8. Estimation of small internal leakage and large chamber A external leakage and leakage coefcients for different wind input proles. (a) Estimation of
internal and chamber A external leakage. (b) Estimation of internal and chamber A external leakage coefcients.
for the pitching and load cylinders to follow in the respective
position and force control loops in experimental study.
The systemis powered by two motor-driven hydraulic pumps.
The pitching and load cylinders are both single-piston cylinders
and their movements are controlled by the proportional valves,
respectively. The valves are controlled by Advantech 610 in-
dustrial PC with PCI 1713 analog input module and PCI 1721
analog output module. The PID controllers are designed to con-
trol the piston position in the pitching cylinder, and the force
output of the load cylinder [24].
The emulator includes a set of auxiliary circuits to simulate
leakage faults of the pitching cylinder. As shown in Fig. 2,
the internal leakage was intentionally introduced between two
chambers, and the external leakage at chamber Aof the pitching
cylinder. The internal leakage is simulated through bypassing
uid across the piston. This is achieved by connecting the two
chambers and controlling the ow through an adjustable ow
control valve. The ow rate is measured again using a turbine
ow meter. The range of ow meter is 20 L/min with the accu-
racy of 1% full scale.
For the simulation of the external leakage on chamber A
of the cylinder, a portion of the uid ow from the side of
chamber A is bypassed to the reservoir by adjusting the ow
control valve. The output of the external-leakage ow control
valve is measured with the same kind of ow meter as earlier.
The estimation of internal and external leakages Q
ip
and Q
epA
follow the denition by Merritt [12], [20]:
Q
ip
= C
ip
(P
A m
P
B m
) (15a)
Q
epA
= C
epA
P
A m
(15b)
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WU et al.: ADAPTIVE ESTIMATION-BASED LEAKAGE DETECTION FOR A WIND TURBINE HYDRAULIC PITCHING SYSTEM 7
where C
ip
denotes the estimation of internal-leakage coefcient
and C
epA
denotes the estimation of chamber A external-leakage
coefcient. P
A m
and P
B m
represent the measurements of
pressure of chambers A and B, respectively.
Through sensors measurement, the internal- and external-
leakage coefcients C
ip m
and C
epA m
follow the denition by
Merritt [20]:
C
ip m
=
Q
ip m
P
A m
P
B m
(16a)
C
epA m
=
Q
epA m
P
A m
(16b)
where Q
ip m
denotes the ow rate measurement of internal
leakage, and Q
epA m
denotes the ow rate measurement for
chamber A external leakage.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
In order to illustrate the geometric relationship between cylin-
der dimension and the pitching angle, the variables or the hy-
draulic pitching mechanism is shown in Fig. 4.
For data acquisition, the sampling rate was set as 100 Hz,
and the data collection window was set to be 20 s with the
onboard memory capacity. A second-order Butterworth low-
pass lter with cutoff frequency of 5 Hz is designed to lter
the data measured from linear variable differential transformers
(LVDT), ow rate and pressure sensors on the pitching cylinder
[21], [24].
The piston position of pitching cylinder can be obtained as
x
p
(
p
) =
_
L
2
p
+ r
2
p
2 L
p
r
p
cos(

+
p
) l
p
(17)
where L
p
, l
p
, r
p
, and

are dimension shown in Fig. 5.

p
is the
pitch angle and x
p
is the pitching cylinder position. The pitch
torque can be described as
T
p
= J

p
+ T
w
= F
c
r
p
cos(
p
) (18)
where J is the moment of inertia of the blade about the pitch
axis and T
w
is the wind load torque imposed on the pitch axis.
In this study, we set L
p
= 1.1 m, l
p
= 1.0 m, r
p
= 0.5 m, and

= 63

. Considering the capacity of hydraulic cylinders in the

test bed, the reference piston position of pitching cylinder and
load provided by the load cylinder are scaled down by twice and
1000 times, respectively.
The pitching angle and load force proles for different wind
inputs are obtained from the dynamic simulation of a 1.5-MW
wind turbine model (WindPact) on FAST. For this 1.5-MW
wind turbine, the cutoff wind speed is set to be 27.5 m/s. The
experiments include cases for mean of 5-, 13-, and 21-m/s wind
speed with 20% turbulence. The extreme condition of 30-m/s
wind speed is also considered in the experiments. Four cases of
wind proles simulated through FAST are shown in Fig. 5.
For four cases of wind input proles, the reference and output
of piston position and load in the pitching and load cylinder are
calculated by (17) and (18), as shown in Fig. 6. For the piston
position output in pitching cylinder with different wind speed,
the steady-state errors are within 3%. For the load output in load
cylinder with different wind speed, the steady-state errors are
within 21.4%.
The leakage and leakage-coefcient estimation for the two
testing cases is presented as follows. In the experiments, all
input signals satisfy the persistent excitation condition. The
measurement of leakage is also ltered by the second-order
Butterworth low-pass lter with cutoff frequency of 5 Hz de-
signed earlier. The leakage estimation is calculated through (15).
The leakage coefcient can be obtained through (16) with the
measurement of leakage and chambers pressure.
Based on the parameter estimation algorithm described in the
previous section, the leakage estimation are derived and shown
with measured leakage (with lter) in Figs. 7 and 8 for different
wind input proles. The developed algorithm can detect the in-
ternal and chamber A external leakage in the pitching cylinder
within 7.8% mean steady-state error and 11% peak steady-state
error. For the internal and chamber A external leakage coef-
cients, the estimation errors are within 7.3% mean steady-state
error and 13.3% peak steady-state error.
Based on Figs. 7 and 8, the convergence time for the leakage
estimation is within 12 s for all simulated cases.
Case 1: Large internal and small chamber Aexternal leakage.
Case 2: Small internal and large chamber A external leakage.
Based on Figs. 7 and 8, the mean of steady-state leakage
estimation errors are smaller under the wind speed of 5 and
30 m/s than under the wind speed of 13 and 21 m/s for different
levels of internal and chamber A external leakage. Similarly,
the maximum steady-state estimation errors are smaller under
the wind speed of 5 and 30 m/s than under the wind speed of
13 and 21 m/s for different levels of internal and chamber A
external leakage. Variable piston position (pitch angle), which
corresponds to varying reference internal and external leakage
and leakage coefcient, seems to have greater impact on the
estimation accuracy.
Based on Figs. 7 and 8, the mean of steady-state leakage-
coefcient estimation errors are also smaller under the wind
speed of 5 and 30 m/s than under the wind speed of 13 and
21 m/s for different levels of internal and chamber A external-
leakage coefcients. The maximum steady-state estimation er-
rors are smaller under the wind speed of 5 and 30 m/s than
under the wind speed of 13 and 21 m/s for different levels of
internal and chamber A external leakage coefcients. The mean
of leakage coefcient steady-state estimation errors are within
0.53% smaller than the mean of leakage steady-state estima-
tion errors. The peak leakage coefcient steady-state estimation
errors are within 2.33% larger than the peak leakage steady-
state estimation errors. The leakage estimation appears to have
better tracking performance under the variable-pitch operation,
while the tracking error for the leakage coefcient seems to be
bearable to certain extent.
Considering the accuracy range of the sensors (1% of
full scale) and the varying reference internal and external
leakages and leakage coefcient in the cases of varying pitch-
ing position, the developed estimation algorithm demonstrates
acceptable performance for fault detection and isolation to quite
an extent. Regarding to the choice diagnostic probe, leakage
coefcients and leakage have respective advantages. Leakage
This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
8 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS
coefcient reects a good normalized quantity, which is easier
to be dened as a single diagnostic probe. For variable-pitch
operation, it is difcult to use the instantaneous leakage as a di-
agnostic probe, rather, the accumulative/average leakage (e.g.,
for several turns of turbine rotor) makes more sense.
V. CONCLUSION
The hydraulic pitching system is critical for securing energy
capture, load reduction, and aerodynamic braking for wind tur-
bine operation. This paper has presented a model-based adap-
tive leakage-detection algorithm. The proposed method con-
siders the realistic wind turbine operation condition, i.e., with
time-varying cylinder position and load. In spite of the coupled
relation for the faults of cylinder internal and external leakages
in the hydraulic system, the method can detect and isolate each
individual fault through the measurement of sensors, i.e., pis-
ton position, and the ow rate, and pressure in chambers at the
pitching cylinder. The proposed scheme is also applicable when
bulk modulus needs to be included.
A scale-down hydraulic pitch emulator has been developed,
with which experimental data have been obtained under dif-
ferent turbulent wind inputs. The piston position in the cylinder
and load reference proles were obtained fromthe simulation of
a 1.5-MW variable-speed turbine model on the NRELs FAST
software. Two cases of coupled different levels of internal and
chamber A external leakage are simulated in the experiments.
With the sensors measurement of piston position, chambers
pressure, and chambers ow rate, the proposed algorithm can
detect the internal and chamber A external leakage in the pitch-
ing cylinder within 7.8% mean steady-state error and 11% peak
steady-state error. With the same sensors measurement, the de-
veloped algorithm can estimate the internal and chamber A ex-
ternal leakage coefcients in the pitching cylinder within 7.3%
mean steady-state error and 13.3% peak steady-state error. With
the consideration of accuracy range of sensors (1% of the full
measurement scale) and the varying reference internal and exter-
nal leakages and leakage coefcient in the cases of varying pitch-
ing position, these results sustain the validity of the proposed
estimation scheme. In the future, more experiments with differ-
ent levels of coupled internal and external leakages, and bulk
modulus may be carried out to verify the developed algorithm.
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Authors photographs and biographies not available at the time of publication.