Weis Level 2 optimization

Wind & Water Computer-Aided Engineering Software Tools
1

Dear community,

I’m new to WEIS. When running the example 14, I come across a weird error. FileNotFoundError: 'aeroelastic' <class FASTLoadCases>: Error calling compute(), [Errno 2] File not found:: 'wind\\lin_NTM_U14.000000_Seed1501552846.0.bts', after the first iteration of OpenFAST. Strangely, this BTS file does exist and is used successfully during the first iteration. The failure happens in the second iteration or beyond, which suggests that WEIS fails to find or reuse the previously generated wind file. This error also occurs for other examples that I switched to level 2 (with an optimization).

This raises a few questions:

  • Is there a known incompatibility between Level 2 (OpenFAST_Linear) and optimization in WEIS? Am I missing something?
  • Should linearization workflows be restricted to DOE or single-run studies only?

I couldn’t find any related topic here in the forum nor on git Q&A.

Thank you for developing such a powerful tool. I’m looking forward to understanding a bit more about all its capabilities.

2

Hi Adele,

I would not recommend switching WEIS examples to use Level 2 without changing anything else. The scripts in example 14 have not been fully tested in a while and are in the process of being depreciated.

The Level 2 WEIS workflows using linear OpenFAST models require additional other modeling effort to create reduced-order models of sometimes questionable accuracy. Linearizations can be helpful for determining coupled natural frequencies and in designing controllers, but it’s not currently a focus of the WEIS program.

If this feature is important for your effort, we would be curious to hear about it and see if there is a way to revive it for a specific version of WEIS.

Best, Dan