Creating a Real-Time Capable Surrogate Model of a Wind Turbine Using
Machine Learning
Abstract
Multibody simulation (MBS) is an established method for modeling wind
turbines for purposes such as load calculation. While capable of
modeling wind turbines at high levels of detail, large MBS models can be
computationally expensive. This makes deployment for real-time critical
use cases like digital twins difficult. Machine learning models can be a
faster alternative because they only capture relevant details and scale
well with parallelization. In this paper, a real-time capable surrogate
model is developed with the goal of capturing the operating mode and the
tower oscillations of an MBS model. Firstly, several machine learning
models based on different architectures are being scaled so that they
can be evaluated within the available computational budget. The selected
models are being trained on the MBS results. The trained models are
being run in a loop with the turbine’s controller and an optional
numerical tower oscillator to create the surrogate model. All tested
models show good convergence behavior and high R 2
values during training. However, running the models in the surrogate
environment proves more difficult as some models diverge from the
expected results. The best performing model in the surrogate environment
is determined using quantitative criteria.