Variable Documentation & Missing / Mislabeled Variables

[SoundsSerious]

Hi

Big fan of WISDEM! its helping alot with some NSF research I'm doing outside of a major institution.

I'm finding the documentation to be very helpful to understand the general concepts in modules, however I was looking for something more along the lines of a list of variables. I did find docs/docstrings/variable_guide.csv and think it would be great if you could put this in a .md file on github or as a section in the documentation that would go along way to helping to understand the example files (for the drivetrain / generator in my case).

There are a few variables such as drivese.generator.B_g which doesn't appear to be used in the code, or drivese.generator.h_sr which appears to be labeled structural mass however is used to calculate the R_out or Outer Radius.

You've built a wonderful tool, however it is hard for someone outside of the research community to completely understand what is going on in the examples or even with the documentation.

A couple of ideas to improve adoption and usability.

1. put the variable list in the documentation online that would be a great first step
2. run a script (perhaps using the n2 diagram code) to interrogate the codebase for variables not in the list or variables in the list that are no longer used.
3. make a publicly comment-able google sheet (or equivalent) so folks like me can ask questions and collab on the documentation.

Thanks!

[gbarter]

Thank you for the kind words and suggestions. The variable table is markdown is probably doable.

Is your core interest the generator models? The variables are indeed tougher to track and understand with some of the global variables only used in some of the generator models but not others. Many of the variable names follow diagrams in this report, which might be helpful to you.

We have also recently dabbled in a slightly higher fidelity generator design approach wrapped around the FEMM tool, but we haven't connect it to the rest of WISDEM quite yet (and might keep it separate regardless). You can explore this a little bit in this repository and these two reports.

[SoundsSerious]

Thanks! Thats awesome to hear.

For my clients project we're studying a floating VAWT turbine with a connected wave converter, so for that reason we haven't really adopted the core WISDEM approach since its core features are based more on standard floating HAWT or land based turbines. The wave converter control also means we have to delve into the Transient domain so we need to do something custom for that as well.

The generator tool & plant finance seems to be where we want to integrate with the "consensus" WISDEM model to generate realistic cost figures. The FEMM library & report I've been referring to heavily as I'm not a generator designer by any means but these libraries give me a fighting chance of getting something that is realistic and competitive!

[gbarter]

Thank you for the context and good luck with the project. Let us know when future questions arise.