AS the size of wind turbines increases, manufacturers face more challenges including achieving

better cost effectiveness. This is currently being addressed through reduction of component masses
leading to turbines becoming less tolerant of fatigue loads [1]. This study is concerned with the
mitigation of fatigue loads in the drive-train of variable-speed wind turbines. Turbulent winds and
gusts can excite modes that can lead to torsional vibrations in the drive-train, which in turn produce
large stresses on components. Ultimately, this may reduce the lifetime of components, such as the
gearbox [2], [3]. Moreover, when torsional vibrations are present in the drive-train, they will be
converted to electrical power oscillations. This is highly undesirable for the operation of the power
system because such oscillations can interact with the power system modes and resonance may
result [4], [5]. Torsional vibrations can be suppressed by including a torsional vibration damper in the
wind turbine drive-train. This helps to reduce mechanical stresses in the drive-train and avoid
potential resonances with the power system. It is important to damp these vibrations at all wind
speeds; however, they are most significant at high wind speeds during which the generator torque is
held constant and the pitch controller is active [6]. Although the torsional vibration damper
presented in this study works well for both low and high wind speeds, results of a wind turbine at
above-rated wind speed are shown. This study was performed on a variable-speed wind turbine
equipped with a full-rated converter (FRC); however, these results apply equally to other types of
variable-speed technologies, such as those based on doubly-fed induction generators (DFIG) [7]. In
such systems, there is a higher risk of exciting torsional vibrations from grid disturbances because
the stator is connected directly to the electrical grid [8]. When insufficient vibration damping is
present in a DFIG-based wind turbine, the vibrations can exhibit an exponentially increasing
magnitude if not controlled [9]. Damping of torsional oscillations in the drive-train can be
accomplished by either the pitch or the generator torque controller. However, it has been reported
that the torque controller is more effective for this task [10] and therefore it was employed in this
paper. A torsional vibration damper was included in the torque loop. This generates a damping
torque which is added to the generator torque reference to provide an auxiliary damping to the
system [6], [11][15]. A well-known torsional vibration damper design approach based on band-pass
filters (BPFs) has been successfully adopted in many wind turbines [12][14]. The stability and
performance of a system equipped with a BPF-based damper can be compromised if subjected to
model uncertainties (e.g., discrepancies in the wind turbine model used for a control design and the
actual wind turbine). In such a case, retuning of the damper is necessary to ensure a good damping
performance [16]. An alternative approach that has been suggested for rolling mill applications
involves a model-based damper. Here, damping is achieved through pole placement using state
feedback with state estimation [17]. This damper design approach can be implemented on all
variable-speed wind turbines when torque control is performed on the generator. A BPF-based
torsional vibration damper was first designed and its performance tested when subjected to model
uncertainties. A model-based torsional damper was then designed in order to overcome the
problem of retuning associated with the BPF approach. A stability analysis in the frequency domain
was performed to assess the effect of the two different dampers on the wind turbine drive-train.
Simulations to compare the performance of the vibration dampers were performed for a wind step
and turbulent wind. To validate the simulation results, a hardware-in-the-loop experiment was
carried out on a wind turbine test rig.