Version 3.0.0 Release
This major release adds a number of improvements to tidal turbine modelling, many of which are detailed in the following article:
Topper MBR, Olson SS, Roberts JD. Techno-Economic Modelling of Tidal Energy Converter Arrays in the Tacoma Narrows.
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. 2020; 8(9):646. https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse8090646
Detailed changes are as follows:
Added
- Added loop to rotor interaction solver. This produces a more accurate result than the single iteration used previously.
- Added check for additional grid orientations to find the maximum number of devices that can be placed during an optimisation. One additional device is added in each direction (in combination) and then assessed.
Changed
- Improved log messages
- Now uses the dominant wake model for superposition of rotor wake velocity deficits. The same dominant wake is chosen for the turbulence kinetic energy factor calculation.
- Replaced term "induction" to avoid confusion. Prefer "velocity" or "velocity coefficient".
- Replaced Mannings number input with beta and alpha coefficients for use with Soulsby type velocity profile calculation.
- Improved performance of rotor CFD data reading.
- Renamed deg360_to_radpi function as bearing_to_radians.
- Improved streamlines plot.
Fixed
- Fixed turbine angle of attack calculation.
- Fixed minimum distance between turbines check.
- Fixed rated power per rotor for MCT style device.
- Fixed rotor streamline calculation travelling in wrong direction.
- Fix bug in positioning of rotors for MCT style device.
- Fixed expected device layout orientation in optimiser by making the inter-column spacing refer to the x-direction and inter-row to the y. Array rotation is then the angle of the oncoming flow minus 90 degrees.
- Fixed optimiser start point estimator increasing scale when it should be reducing it
- Fix incorrect sorting of outputs for rotors by making names equal length
- Fix bug which forced all rotors to share the same input data