WinchControllers

Documentation for the package WinchControllers.

This package is part of Julia Kite Power Tools, which consists of the following packages:

Julia Kite Power Tools

Goals of this package

The goal of this package is to provide controllers for winches that consist of a motor/generator connected to a drum (with or without gearbox). On the drum is a tether that is connected to a load or a kite. Currently operation in air is assumed, but the package could also be extended for winches connected to under-water cables. While the main use case of the author are airborne wind energy systems, I am open to add features needed for other use cases.

Implemented features:

lower force control (assure that there is always a minimal cable tension)
upper force control (keep the maximal force limited)
reel-out speed control proportional to the square root of the force (other relationships can easily be added), either piecewise between the force limits or as a pure kv * sqrt(force) law (WCSettings.mode = "reelout")
control of asynchronous motors/ generators
speed control
auto-tuning of the controller
disk based stability analysis of linearized system including the force controllers
torque controlled winches, holding either a length (WinchPosController) or a force (WinchForceController); the length controller has an optional acceleration feed-forward (WCSettings.winch_acc_ff)
soft force limiting for REELOUT mode, a continuous alternative to the upper/lower force controllers ([`calcvrosoft](@ref), settingsforcelimitandsoftlfc): a smoothly saturated inverse of the tension curve, a reel-in line belowflow`, an optional low-pass filter of the measured force and an optional soft clamp at the maximal reel-out speed

Planned features

improved, simplified system model using a quasi-steady tether model and an aerodynamic model including kite mass the cross-wind factor

Installation

Install Julia 1.12 or later, if you haven't already. Before installing this software it is suggested to create a new project, for example like this:

mkdir test
cd test
julia --project="."

Then add WinchControllers from Julia's package manager, by typing:

using Pkg
pkg"add WinchControllers"

at the Julia prompt. You can run the unit tests with the command:

pkg"test WinchControllers"

To add the examples and install the packages needed by the examples, run:

using WinchControllers
WinchControllers.install_examples()
exit()

Installation using git

If you want to modify, tune and understand the controllers, it is better to check out this project from git:

git clone https://github.com/OpenSourceAWE/WinchControllers.jl.git
cd WinchControllers.jl
git checkout v0.6.2
bin/install

For the checkout command, use the tag of the latest version. The installation script asks which Julia version to use (1.11, 1.12 or 1.13), installs the matching default manifest, instantiates and precompiles the main, examples, test and docs projects and, on Julia 1.12 and 1.13, also runs the tests.

Running the examples

To run the examples, launch Julia with:

bin/run_julia

and then, in the Julia REPL, type:

menu()

Alternatively, launch Julia with julia --project and type include("examples/menu.jl"). You should now see a terminal menu with some examples. Select one using the <CURSOR UP> and <CURSOR DOWN> keys, and press <ENTER> to run the selected example.

Provides