Python-Modelica framework for automated simulation and optimization

Modeling and simulation are essential for the development of complex engineering systems, such as wind turbines. Thus, Fraunhofer IWES (Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems) has developed the MoWiT (Modelica for Wind Turbines) library for fully-coupled aero-hydro-servo-elastic simulations of wind turbine systems. To meet the needs for detailed assessment and design development of such sophisticated engineering systems, which imply iterative steps for design optimization, a Python-Modelica framework is set up and presented in this paper. By means of this, the simulation of MoWiT models can easily be managed, including redefinition of model parameters, specification of output sensors and simulation settings, integration of optimization algorithms, post-processing of simulation results, as well as parallel execution of several simulations. The application of this Python-Modelica framework is shown based on the example of a design optimization task of a floating wind turbine support structure.