Examples - reel-out

The runs on this page fly the same entry and figure-of-eight pattern as the figure-of-eight examples, but reel the tether out under load, which is how the kite produces power. Installation, the example menu and the select_* scripts are described on Examples - general.

Reel-out runs

simple_reelout.jl

Flies the figure-of-eight pattern with a reel-out winch. The tether starts at l_tether (150 m by default); from the moment the guidance engages, the winch reels out with the speed law v_set = kv * sqrt(force) of WinchControllers.jl, until the tether reaches reelout_l_max or the kite has flown n_fig_eight figures of eight. Then the length is held, and in a fifth phase the depower switches to depower_final while the pattern keeps flying. There is no reel-in phase. The run writes an Arrow log to output/, named after the project's log_file setting.

simple_reelout_plots.jl

Re-plots the last log of simple_reelout.jl or simple_opt_reelout.jl without simulating again. The figures are those of simple_fig8_plots.jl, plus the flown tether length against the lap count, the reel-out speed against its set point, the commanded depower with the state of the winch controller, and optionally the 3D path and the power of the winch.

simple_reelout_play.jl

Replays the last log of simple_reelout.jl in the KiteViewers 3D window. No simulation runs; the project and the log are found exactly as simple_reelout.jl finds them.

simple_opt_reelout.jl

simple_reelout.jl along a path the AWETrim optimizer produced instead of along the lemniscate: the optimizer is asked for the power-optimal reel-out path for the run's own wind and winch, and the path is re-optimized while the tether gets longer. Feasibility gates (check_reelout_feasibility, check_startup_path) reject paths the kite cannot fly before they are installed. The run summary reports the power the optimizer predicted next to the power the run harvested. The settings of the optimizer come from data/traj_opt.yaml, and the run logs to <log_file>_opt, so the lemniscate run stays as its baseline.

plot_trajectory.jl

Plots the newest startup path that the feasibility gate of simple_opt_reelout.jl rejected: the reference curve in the azimuth–elevation plane as the optimizer returned it, with its curvature margin and predicted power. The gate saves each rejected path in trajectories/ before the run aborts.

Stability and tuning

stability_opt_reelout.jl

A disk-margin stability analysis of the course-control loop of simple_opt_reelout.jl over the full range of tether length, from l_tether to reelout_l_max. Plant and controller are those of stability_fig8.jl; the operating points (apparent wind speed, kite speed, depower, elevation) are taken from a flown log. It needs ControlSystemsBase.

stability_global.jl

Runs stability_opt_reelout.jl on every archived scenario of both sites, one site after the other as build_all_scenarios.jl does, prints the worst disk margin of each one and writes each site's stability_overview.md. The operating points come from the scenario's log and the controller from the current settings, so the table answers whether the current tuning is stable at every operating point flown so far.

retune_guided.jl

Retunes the reel-out course loop in small steps until the worst guided disk margin over all archived scenarios of both sites reaches a target. It starts from the current fc_settings_reelout.yaml and evaluates each trial setting on the linear model of stability_opt_reelout.jl, without flying.

Scenarios

A scenario is the archived record of one simple_opt_reelout.jl run: its log, its run summary and every settings file that produced it, in output/scenarios/<site>/vNN, with site either maasvlakte or cabauw and NN the wind speed.

move_scenario.jl

Moves the last finished run of simple_opt_reelout.jl into output/scenarios/<site>/, in a folder named after the wind speed it was flown at (6.0 m/s becomes v06). Wind speed and site are read from the run's own summary. The log is compressed on the way.

copy_scenario.jl

The same as move_scenario.jl, but a run at a wind speed that already has a scenario is stored as vNN_2, vNN_3, … instead of replacing it.

build_all_scenarios.jl

Re-flies every archived scenario of both sites with the current code and settings, and replaces each scenario with the new run if it finished cleanly and passed all success criteria; otherwise the old scenario is kept. Afterwards it rewrites the overview of each site. This takes about 30 minutes.

plot_scenario.jl

An interactive menu to re-plot an archived scenario with simple_reelout_plots.jl, using the log and settings stored in the scenario's own folder.

create_overview.jl

Writes the overview.md of the active site for the SimulationResults notebooks: one row per wind speed with power, force, reel-out speed, power ratio and the success criteria, read from the run summaries of the scenarios.

create_plots.jl

Generates the pattern, time-series, power and aerodynamics plots and an interactive WGLMakie 3D path for every scenario of the active site, and saves them to notebooks/images/<site>/.

plot_powercurve.jl

Plots the mean, maximum and minimum reel-out power, tether force and reel-out speed against the wind speed, one point per scenario of the active site.

plot_patterns_paper.jl

Generates the pattern plots of the paper: the Maasvlakte and Cabauw scenarios at a given wind speed, and a pair of runs with and without feedforward on a shared axis scale. The PDFs are saved in the figures/ folder of the paper's repository.

compress.jl

Shrinks a saved Arrow log by dropping the corner points of the aerodynamic panels, which are only used for visualization and make up about 78 % of a reel-out log. Optionally it also decimates the rows. A compressed log loads and replays unchanged.

Regression checks

regression_baseline.jl

Flies simple_opt_reelout.jl at a site and wind speed with the optimizer's answers replayed from an archived scenario, so no optimizer server is needed, and writes the log and summary to a folder of its own. Run it before and after a refactor, and compare the two results with compare_runs.jl.

compare_runs.jl

Compares two runs of simple_opt_reelout.jl, the Arrow logs column by column and the run summaries key by key, and prints every difference. Fields that differ between any two runs, such as wall-clock times and the git state, are ignored.

Helper files

reelout_results.jl

Scoring, summary, archive and plots of a run of simple_opt_reelout.jl, included by it: it reloads the log, prints the results, writes the run summary, copies log and settings into a timestamped archive folder and draws the plots. It does not touch the plant, so a change to it can be checked by re-scoring an existing log.

plot_pattern_utils.jl

The plotting functions for pattern, time series, power and aerodynamics, shared by simple_reelout_plots.jl and create_plots.jl.