Design & Control of Single Wire Stabilised Payload System
Authors
Valbjørn, Daniel ; Leidorf, Oliver Baumann
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2025
Submitted on
2025-05-30
Pages
118
Abstract
As more wind turbines are built, the need for maintenance grows, and a large share of lifetime costs comes from maintenance. About half of those costs are for renting and operating cranes. Airflight proposes using flying cranes to reduce the cost of delivering lightweight components. This report designs a solution to make flying cranes more practical by increasing the separation between the crane and the turbine, which requires stabilizing the lowered payload. The project develops a single-wire stabilized payload system (SPS) for delivering components from a flying crane to a wind turbine. The design was created using the House of Quality (a method that translates needs into technical requirements) and a methodological analysis. The resulting SPS features four brushless DC (BLDC) motors aligned along the same axis. A model of the SPS was built in Simulink and includes four BLDC motor models, a mechanical pendulum, and a yaw model (rotation about the vertical axis). The pendulum model was derived using Euler–Lagrange mechanics and expressed with generalized coordinates. The models were verified against real-world behavior and then linearized to design linear controllers. LQI and classical control methods were applied. A prototype was constructed, and the controllers were implemented and tested. The tests show that the SPS reduces oscillations at different wind speeds to about 10–15 seconds. Without control, the natural damping is about 70–180 seconds. This demonstrates that the system can effectively damp oscillations under varying conditions. However, further work is needed before it becomes a commercially viable product for real-world use.
Efterhånden som der bygges flere vindmøller, vokser behovet for vedligeholdelse. En stor del af levetidsomkostningerne går til vedligehold, hvor omkring halvdelen er leje og drift af kraner. Airflight foreslår at bruge flyvende kraner til at reducere omkostningerne ved at levere lette komponenter. Denne rapport beskriver en løsning, der gør det lettere at bruge flyvende kraner ved at øge afstanden mellem kranen og vindmøllen. Det kræver, at den nedsænkede last stabiliseres. Arbejdet fokuserer på at udvikle et enkelt-wire stabiliseret lastsystem (SPS) til at levere en last fra en flyvende kran til en vindmølle. Designet er udarbejdet med House of Quality (en metode, der omsætter behov til tekniske krav) og en metodisk analyse. Det resulterede i et SPS-design med fire børsteløse DC-motorer (BLDC) placeret langs samme akse. En model af SPS blev opbygget i Simulink og omfatter modeller af de fire BLDC-motorer, et mekanisk pendul og en yaw-model (drejning om lodret akse). Pendulmodellen er udledt med Euler-Lagrange-mekanik og beskrevet ved generaliserede koordinater. Modellerne er verificeret til at afspejle virkeligheden tilfredsstillende og derefter lineariseret for at kunne udvikle lineære regulatorer. Der er anvendt LQI og klassisk regulering. En prototype blev konstrueret, og regulatorerne blev implementeret og testet. Testene viser, at SPS dæmper svingninger ved forskellige vindhastigheder på cirka 10–15 sekunder. Uden regulering er den naturlige dæmpning cirka 70–180 sekunder. Det viser, at systemet effektivt kan dæmpe svingninger under forskellige forhold. Der er dog behov for yderligere arbejde, før løsningen kan blive kommercielt anvendelig i praksis.
[This apstract has been rewritten with the help of AI based on the project's original abstract]