Battery Ducted Fan Network with Segment Feedback

[Jon Watts]

Hi all,

I'm currently using the battery ducted fan network in SUAVE to investigate an aircraft that uses that type of propulsion system and have successfully got it all implemented, alongside a complete mission analysis (much like the one from the Boeing 737 tutorial).

What I would like to do now though is incorporate the "plot_battery_pack_conditions" function into my mission plots so that I can see how the battery has performed during the mission, much like the outputs of the eVTOL tutorial.

I've had a look and initially the request for that plot type flagged an error that:

"'Conditions' object has no attribute 'battery_current'",

which I believe was because the assignment within the battery ducted fan network was under "'conditions.propulsion.current'" and not "'conditions.propulsion.battery_current'".

Having changed that, it quickly became apparent though that the issues extended beyond that in the sense that whilst in the Lift_Cruise.py network used in the eVTOL tutorial has a substantial amount of code within it dedicated to feeding back battery conditions and states during segments, that these did not feature in the Battery_Ducted_Fan.py network.

I had a go myself at trying to work out what would be needed in the Battery_Ducted_Fan.py network in order to achieve this, but as I'm still fairly new to Python and SUAVE (although getting better each day!), I did get a bit lost.

I know that the SUAVE team are very busy with a multitude of different things, but if anyone had some potential advice as to where to look in particular or pointers to the key features that would need to carry over from the Lift_Cruise.py network into the Battery_Ducted_Fan.py network, it would very much be appreciated!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Kind regards,

Jon

[Emilio]

Hi Jon,

It looks like that network doesn't have the function that sets up the unknowns and residuals. The battery isn't setup correctly. So it is very out of date.

If you would like to update it, feel free to submit a pull request. We can help guide you through that process. If not please make an issue on our github site and I'll address it soon.

-Emilio

[Jon Watts]

Hi Emilio,

Apologies if this is a duplicate message but I'm fairly confident that the previous one didn't send for some reason.

Thank you for getting back to me on that - I had a feeling that the unknowns and residuals were at the heart of it.

I would be interested in updating it; I'm still fairly new to Python/SUAVE so it may take me a bit longer than yourself or another member of the SUAVE team to do it, but I think it would be a good experience for me and would be quite rewarding in the end.

I will submit a pull request tomorrow and then when either yourself or someone else from SUAVE is available (I don't expect you to work over the weekend!), some guidance on the process would be very much appreciated!

Also let me know if you want any additional contact information etc. from me if that would make things in the future any easier.

Kind regards,

Jon

[Emilio]

Hi,

I got two email notifications. Yeah, please submit. I will warn, if we come off as rude, that is not our intent. We do a lot of these and we need to be quick.

I think github is the best platform for us to connect. I can leave comments on code and it becomes an interactive process.

-Emilio

[Jon Watts]

Hi Emilio,

I'm afraid that due to recent discussions with my PhD supervisors that I won't have the time now to address the changes myself to the Battery Ducted Fan network, so I will instead submit an issue on the GitHub site as previously suggested.

Apologies for the inconvenience.

Kind regards,

Jon

[Emilio]

Thanks for the issue!

-Emilio