Microprocessor Control Design for a Low-Head Crossflow Turbine

摘要

A microprocessor based controller is designed for use on a low-head crossflow turbine, The design contains a model of the turbine, an algorithm for maximizing output power, software design, and software testing. Modelling of the turbine is performed using tabular data in order to avoid the complexity of deriving an equation model. Linear interpolation of the tabular data is used to obtain a continuous model of the turbine. Based upon turbine hardware, turbine characteristics, and economic feasibility, a search design is selected as most appropriate for the crossflow turbine. Specifically, a gradient search algorithm is chosen to maximum the turbine's output power. Software is designed for the gradient search and other modes of the controller. The software design contains flow diagrams, pseudo-code, and a data dictionary, Testing the software with the linear interpolation model, shows the gradient search adequately maximizes the output power of the modelled crossflow turbine. (Theses).