FAST theory manual

Wind & Water Computer-Aided Engineering Software Tools
399

Dear Juan,

Here are my answers to your questions:

  1. I have sent you what is known as the “Unofficial FAST Theory Manual”, but this is definitely not the first documentation I would read. As discussed in prior posts on this topic, this document is mostly useful if you want to understand the theory and structure of the ElastoDyn module. For new beginners of OpenFAST, unfortunately we don’t have detailed step-by-step instructions for how to make use of OpenFAST. Regardless, a good way to learn OpenFAST is to review the presentations and sample models/simulations that were presented at our last modeling workshop. These are available for FAST v8.08 (not quite the newest version, but I don’t have newer materials that are so comprehensive) in my in my Sep 15, 2014 post in the forum topic found here: Modeling Workshops. After that, I suggest that you study the various user’s guides and theory manuals.

  2. I would use whichever operating system you are most comfortable with; OpenFAST should work on both Windows and Linux/Ubuntu. You shouldn’t need to compile the source code unless you want to change the source code or implemented custom controls in source code. The Simulink interface and ROSCO controller provide convenient ways of implementing control systems without compiling.

  3. It looks like you are running OpenFAST correctly. Are you showing the OpenFAST output from a virtual Windows machine? The model you are running requires the use of a controller (DISCON) precompiled as a dynamic library. On Windows, this library should have a .dll extension. It doesn’t look like the path to these files is correct. You can find the files available for download here: github.com/OpenFAST/openfast/re … N_DLLS.zip.

Best regards,