Overview
This proposal aimed at improving Modelica and the V6 Systems solutions related to Dymola technology, Dymola V6, to better address electrical modeling and simulation. The tool improvements were developed by Dassault Systemes and the Austrian Institute of Technology contributed by evaluating the new features and by providing new Modelica libraries.
The new features developed include multi-core simulation support, interactive parameter studies, improved post-processing and automatic documentation, requirement modeling, and model layers in the graphical user interface. Many of these improvements could be extended also outside of the electrical domain and would make Modelica and Dymola V6 even more attractive for industrial, large-scale, model-based development.
Funding
Results
Executive Summary:
The MODELSSA project has delivered new functionality to the CATIA Systems solutions related to Dymola technology (www.dymola.com) to target the area of electrical systems simulation and analysis using Modelica (www.modelica.org). Focus has been on power electronic circuits and the new features have addressed both modeling and simulation aspects, as well as post-processing.
The diagram layer, the view that shows graphically interconnected components, has been extended to support component filtering. Components from different physical domains can be filtered out (dimmed or removed), either using command line functions or via the graphical user interface, to support easier browsing of complex models.
The feasibility of using 3D Electrical information for automatic creation of a corresponding Modelica model has been analysed. A prototype has been implemented using XML as intermediate format in the transfomation from CATIA to Modelica.
An improved graphical user interface for linear system analysis has been developed based on a new, general, mechanism to support user-configurable menus. Evolutions for improved steady-state initialization based on Modelica homotopy has also been delivered.
Two different approaches to increase simulation speed for power electronic circuits have been developed, support for automatic partitioning and code generation for multicore platforms and support for more efficient handling of events. The two approaches are complementing and can be used either together or in isolation depending on the model structure.
New features have been developed to support more convenient parameter studies, including a more user-friendly interface to model experimentation features and new functionality to support interactive tuning of parameters.
It has been demonstrated how properties and requirements modeling can be achieved using Modelica and Dymola technology. A concept of selections has been implemented to facilitate filtering out requirements in models.
The post-processing features have been improved to support plotting of general expressions constructed from signals from a result file. Furthermore, built-in support for signal operators, including root-mean-square (RMS), AC-coupled RMS, Total harmonic distortion (THD), and FFT (Fast Fourier Transform), has been implemented.
Configurable, automatic documentation is enabled by a dynamic report generator, which enables a HTML page loaded in a browser to call functions in Dymola using JavaScript. It is possible to insert a model diagram, change parameters, simulate a model, show plots, show animations, and more.