Hardware-in-the-loop simulation ( Labview / NI)

Hello,

I read the document “Using FAST for LabVIEW.pdf” and I would like to buy suitable equipment for real-time aerogenerator closed loop control, I intend use Hardware In Loop for do my simulation tests and control studies. On page 1 of the document is written that were used PXI Controllers for simulation of turbines CART.
I would like to know what NI hardware(PXI controller) was used. Could you help me with this? Also would like to know if the hardware was able to meet the requirements of real-time execution.

In the past I have worked with FAST simulation model of wind turbine supplied by NREL, within the Matlab/Simulink environment(Open-loop.mdl). But I realized that the FAST models requires a lot of CPU processing, I was thinkint if it`s possible to make an application of HIL with the current CPU processing power. The integration time-step this simulation its 4ms.

Regards

Hi,

We’ve used PXI 8196-RT and PXI 8108-RT controllers for the CARTs. I should say that the primary use of the controllers is actually controlling the physical turbines at a rate of 400 Hz, and at this we’ve seen good behavior in real time and using the real time trace toolkit we can see we have a good amount of clock-cycle left over after performing all control operations.

We developed a built-in simulator (both FAST and a simple 1 DOF model) so that we could check-out new controllers in-place, in the exact environment and setup. Here though, it was less important to run in real time (when running the real turbine real-time is critical to keep up with various data streams coming in), and I can say that in our case the FAST model as implemented at 400 Hz ran, last time I checked, it ran just a little slower than real time (FAST took longer than 1/400th of a second, but not by too much). However, like I said since our primary interest was controller checkout prior to operation, this was acceptable.

I think with your time step though it could meet real time, it was close on ours, but I couldn’t say for sure. Hope this all helps!

Paul

Hi Paul,

Thank you. Your answer help me a lot!