Reliable Fluid Power Pitch Systems: ASME/BATH 2015 Symposium on Fluid Power & Motion Control

The key objectives of wind turbine manufactures and buyers are to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership and Total Cost of Energy. Among others, low downtime of a wind turbine is important to increase the amount of energy produced during its lifetime. Historical data indicate that pitch systems accounts for a substantial part of the downtime of wind turbines. With a focus on fluid power pitch systems; this paper presents an overview of methods relevant to assessing and increasing the reliability and availability of such systems. Four major areas are identified and covered; failure analysis, reliability and availability assess- ment, condition monitoring and fault-tolerant control. Within each area a brief description of the state of the art is given. On basis of the state of the art, a discussion is given on where further work is required in order to obtain a systematic framework for designing reliable fluid power.