Yes, Pierre. With JoeF and DaveS, we were considering a Kites-based AWE Basic school for envisaged early AWE entry jobs. Most of the materials are now in possession of Jalbert Aerology Laboratory of which DaveS is now CTO and I just got appointed as VP (Africa).
Below is an interesting piece therefrom:
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> Kite Networks in relation to Mathematical Network Theory
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Network Theory is well-developed branch of mathematics also known as Graph Theory. Computer Networks are the best-known application of Network Theory, but every field of science and engineering has its versions, from Condensed Matter Physics to Biological Networks, Transportation Networks, and so on. All these inform and enable Network Theory application in new domains.
Jalbert Aerology Lab (JAL) proposes the key to Airborne Wind Energy scaling is Kite Networks, just as Computer Networks are the dominant scaling paradigm of computing. In fact, every kite or computer is a basic network already, and Higher Topological Orders of many-connected units are the simply the only logical path to scale greatly, just as a higher organism is of necessity a network of cells. This is more than armchair daydream, given the Climate Endgame crisis. Kite Networks may be the key mitigating technology, and its mathematical identification absolutely critical.
Network Theory is noted for “laws”/theorems capturing general advantages of networking. Kite Networks are easily compared to the predictions of specific theorems to formally describe just what makes this such a fertile engineering-science and design paradigm. Kite Networks are readily classified according to Network Theory properties.
Metcalfe Network Effect- value increases by number
Kite Networks are classed as Spatial Networks of combined Topological and Geometric Order. Physical Chemistry domains of molecular orders, from crystallography to molecular biology have direct spatial analogs to Kite Networks. A Kite Train, for example is a spatial network chain topology like a polymer chain. In fact, a Kite Network is necessarily comprised of polymer networks in fractal dimensions. A Kite Network is a novel metamaterial phase of condensed matter (Kitematter).
A single kite is a primitive peer-to-peer network connection of kite and anchor. The first-generation concept of a Kite Farm is topologically a Star-Network with Earth as its Central Node linking to all Single-Kite Units. We begin to distinguish what sort of Kite Networks are Scale-free or not, whether Metcalfe’s Law or Beckstrom’s Law applies to a given archetype, and so on. An early depiction of a possibly iconic form of Kite Network-
Scale-free is the property of scale variance across a network, like how a kite bridle may consist of various lengths of line segments. Golden Age German Weather-kite trains notably varied proportions of kite trains in a scale-free manner. Advanced Kite Networks tend to be even more scale-free than Classic Kite precedents like Trains, Arches, and Meshes, especially at network edges and across multi-layers.
Effective Kite Network Theory increasingly reifies various abstract complex properties, like rotation in phase-space of oscillations. Thus, each unit-sail (kixel) can steer crosswind pumping cycles without geometric pivoting, but merely by rotating axes-of-tilt (strike and dip in geospatial terms). Similarly, the large State-Space of a Kite Network is an abstraction, as the Network only physically occupies one state at a time.
Advanced Kite Networks exchange state and control information across interconnections aloft, enabling a single control thread to coordinate a large number of units (a Beckstrom Network Effect). Below see WP’s example of Network Control in terms of Tensor Math in graphical and matrix forms. The vector graph is quite recognizable as the sort of representation used for unit-kites. In effect, a unit-network aggregates many units, marginally- or non-tractable, into one unit, maximally tractable.
Network controllability - Wikipedia
Kite Networks have two primary superposed flow, energy of wind-to-polymer phonons and embodied state-information.
Network flow problem - Wikipedia
Theory starting to be reduced to practice-
Each sail has its own DOFs rigged. Both collective and independent motions are supported.
Misc Notes-
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Unit-sail scaling limit is operational, ~1000m2, the practical limit where ground handling damages kite fabric by abrasion of too much packed mass.
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Hobby Kite Network Records have long achieved many thousands of interconnected unit-kites.
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Train Kites add lift in multiple stages vertically, much like a multi-stage rocket.
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Arch Kites extend unit-count horizontally.
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Train x Arch scaling define a maximal crosswind harvesting plane.
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Provisional Patent filing (open participation for final submission)-
(4) (PDF) Advanced Kite Networks (researchgate.net)