TopDesign Model Toolchain
ABOUT TOPDESIGN
MERIDIONAL’s TopDesign is a tool chain integration platform developed for multi-disciplinary analysis and optimisation (MDAO) in wind energy.
TopDesign supports researchers, engineers and practitioners in the wind energy sector who need to simulate, design, operate, and investigate wind farms (both conventional and airborne). They will benefit from the capability to integrate existing and new models and workflows.
This toolchain responds to three challenges:
The difficulty of adopting different tools and models when dealing with the analysis and design optimization of wind turbines and wind farms
The complexity of use of existing MDAO platforms (e.g. DAKOTA and OpenMDAO)
The lack of an integrated platform specifically developed for the wind energy sector
What TopDesign can do:
It easily integrates and couples different models and tools in different formats and programming languages
It is easily extendible and adaptable by different users from both academia and industry
It is configurable and applicable to various kinds of MDAO tasks in the wind energy sector
METHODOLOGY
The platform is written with Python using an object-oriented programming methodology.
However, the different models and tools that need to be integrated or coupled through TopDesign don’t have to be Python-based. They can:
- be written in different programming languages (e.g. Matlab, Fortran, C++)
- take different formats (like scripts, compiled executables)
Depending on the usage scenarios, these tools or models can also be open-source or commercial, in-house-developed or third-party-provided.
To enable smooth coupling and interaction, any existing custom tool/model is embedded or wrapped into a Python object representing the model.
All relevant tools and models wrapped into different Python models can then be integrated or coupled into a system to carry out a multi-disciplinary analysis.
SOFTWARE DESIGN
The TopDesign platform is written as a Python package and contains:
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Core components
Model and system classes, utilities functions.
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Wind farm simulation tools
Models for wind condition and wind farm simulation.
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Optimisers
Optimisation algorithms implemented/integrated on the platform.
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Examples
working examples that demonstrate different scenarios for using the platform.
USER’S GUIDE
The TopDesign package can be easily installed from
PyPI using the command:
pip install topdesign
GitLab, using the command:
pip install git+https://gitlab.windenergy.dtu.dk/TOPFARM/basic-plugins/topdesign.git
Learn more about TopDesign