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

该学院早期职业发展（Career）基金将率先开发世界上第一个快速原型系统，用于实验优化空中风能系统的飞行动力学和控制。机载风能系统用缆绳和提升体取代塔架，减少了部署时间和固定基础设施成本，并使涡轮机能够利用强大的高空风。这些系统的成功实现预计将使电力成本降至每千瓦时0.25美元以下，为偏远社区、岛屿、军事基地和深水近海地区提供具有成本竞争力的能源解决方案。在恶劣大气条件下稳定机载风能系统的控制系统的合成仍然是其广泛接受的瓶颈，而高原型开发成本进一步加剧了这一瓶颈。这项研究将降低多个数量级的控制系统原型成本，使用1/100比例的模型，3D打印，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机载风能公司的互动，发展一个工业和小企业的视角。拓展活动包括为一所高中工程夏令营开发风筝设计模块，并为一所经济困难的大学预科高中的学生共同设计一门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装置和控制器的优化问题，实验是必不可少的，但在全尺寸时成本很高。本研究通过一个独特的框架解决了植物/控制器耦合和实验的必要性，该框架将数值优化与在水道中捆绑和“飞行”的3D打印模型的实验室规模实验相结合。该水道平台将用于拴系系统的闭环控制，已被证明具有与全尺寸系统相似的动态性能。在提出的装置和控制器优化过程中，实验数据将用于进行参数识别并为随后的数值优化迭代生成校正。在每次数值优化迭代完成时，将使用实验技术的优化设计来确定要测试的一组配置，并考虑每次重新配置的成本。研究将侧重于推导所提出算法的收敛性和效率结果，利用系统识别和实验优化设计的工具。此外，本研究提出的优化方法将在静止和侧风机载风能系统上进行验证。

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.