CAREER: Efficient Experimental Optimization for High-Performance Airborne Wind Energy Systems

这项学院早期职业发展(Career)补助金将开创世界上第一个快速原型系统，用于试验性地优化飞行动力学和机载风能系统的控制。机载风能系统用系绳和升降体取代了塔架，减少了部署时间和固定的基础设施成本，并使涡轮机能够利用高海拔的强风。这些系统的成功实现预计将产生低于每千瓦时0.25美元的统一电力成本，为偏远社区、岛屿、军事基地和深水近海地点提供具有成本竞争力的能源解决方案。在恶劣的大气条件下稳定机载风能系统的控制系统的综合仍然是它们被广泛接受的瓶颈，而高昂的原型开发成本进一步加剧了这一瓶颈。这项研究将使用1/100比例的模型，将控制系统原型成本降低多个数量级，这些模型是3D打印的，系住并在水道实验室测试设施中“飞行”。水通道为优化控制系统设计提供了理想的机制，同时复制了全尺寸系统的关键动态特性。在整个项目中，学生将通过与一家领先的早期空中风能公司的互动，发展工业和小企业的视角。外展活动包括为高中工程夏令营开发风筝设计模块，以及为经济困难的学生共同设计大学预科高中的能源丰富的科学课程。机载风能飞行性能的优化是一个耦合的装置和控制器优化问题，其中实验是必不可少的，但全面投入成本很高。这项研究通过一个独特的框架来解决对象/控制器的耦合和实验的必要性，该框架将数值优化与3D打印模型的实验室规模实验相结合，这些模型被系住并在水道中“飞行”。这一水通道平台将被用于系留系统的闭环控制，已被证明产生了与全尺寸系统相似的动态性能。在所提出的对象和控制器优化过程中，将使用实验数据进行参数辨识，并为后续的数值优化迭代生成校正。在每次数值优化迭代完成时，将使用最优实验设计技术来确定要测试的一组配置，同时考虑到每次重新配置的成本。研究的重点是利用系统辨识和实验优化设计的工具，推导出所提出的算法的收敛和效率结果。此外，本研究提出的优化方法将在定常风能系统和侧风风能系统上得到验证。

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant will pioneer a first-in-world rapid prototyping system for experimentally optimizing the flight dynamics and control of airborne wind energy systems. Airborne wind energy systems replace towers with tethers and a lifting body, reducing deployment time and fixed infrastructure costs, and enabling turbines to take advantage of strong, high-altitude winds. Successful realization of these systems is projected to yield levelized costs of electricity below $0.25 per kW-h, providing cost-competitive energy solutions to remote communities, islands, military bases, and deep-water offshore locations. The synthesis of control systems to stabilize airborne wind energy systems in harsh atmospheric conditions remains a bottleneck for their widespread acceptance, further exacerbated by high prototype development costs. This research will reduce control system prototyping costs by multiple orders of magnitude, using 1/100-scale models that are 3D printed, tethered, and "flown" in a water channel laboratory test facility. The water channel provides an ideal mechanism for optimizing the control system design while replicating key dynamic properties of the full-scale system. Throughout the project, students will develop an industrial and small-business perspective through interactions with a leading early-stage airborne wind energy company. Outreach activities include the development of kite design modules for a high school engineering summer camp and co-design of an energy-rich science curriculum for an early college high school for economically disadvantaged students.Optimization of airborne wind energy flight performance represents a coupled plant and controller optimization problem, where experiments are indispensable but expensive at full-scale. This research addresses the plant/controller coupling and the necessity of experiments through the a unique framework that combines numerical optimization with lab-scale experiments on 3D printed models that are tethered and "flown" in a water channel. This water channel platform, which will be instrumented for closed-loop control of tethered systems, has been shown to yield provably similar dynamic performance to full-scale systems. In the proposed plant and controller optimization process, experimental data will be used to perform parameter identification and generate corrections to subsequent numerical optimization iterations. At the completion of each numerical optimization iteration, optimal design of experiments techniques will be used to determine a set of configurations to be tested, taking into account the cost of each reconfiguration. The research will focus on the derivation of convergence and efficiency results for the proposed algorithms, leveraging tools from system identification and optimal design of experiments. Furthermore, the optimization methods originating from this research will be validated on both a stationary and crosswind airborne wind energy system.