SIMULATION ZONE
WHAT IS ECOSIMPRO AND WHAT DOES IT CONSIST OF:
EcosimPro: First off, it should be said that EcosimPro, like other modelling and simulation programs, was born of the need to know how physical and chemical systems behave under operating conditions.
Systems can be represented in EcosimPro either with a modelling language or graphically. For modelling purposes, an easy-to-learn language was created that takes ideas from commonly used object-oriented languages such as C++.
The user can model components such as a water tank, a pump, a valve, a pipe, etc. with the variables being exchanged and with the equations that govern them. Afterwards, another user can model a new system based on these simple components. For example, a hydraulic network with various pipes, pumps, etc. EcosimPro takes care of extracting the equations from the set, ordering them and solving them numerically. No longer does the final user have to calculate the final mathematical model, nor resort to problem solver programs.
It can be said that these kinds of tools are a quantitative leap for engineering work, since it is a tool that lets highly complex mathematical simulation problems be solved quickly.
USE IN INDUSTRY
EcosimPro is being used in a wide variety of disciplines. Generally speaking, the main areas using it, among many others, are the following:
Environmental Control and Life Support on Manned Spacecraft (ECLSS): EcosimPro is the European Space Agency's official tool in this field. Other users of this library include NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, EADS, Alenia, etc. in designing their experiments with manned spacecraft.
Space Propulsion: ESA has developed a series of standard libraries currently being used by a large number of European companies working in this sector. EcosimPro has been used to model chemical propulsion, electrical propulsion, rockets, etc, which today are state of the art in this area.
Energy: EcosimPro has been used in many projects involving Power Plants (combined cycle plants, nuclear power plants, etc.) to carry out studies on heat, water hammer, transients in piping, etc. Also modelled have been thermo-solar plants, fuel cells, and so forth.
Processes: In industrial processes, EcosimPro has been used to model desalination plants, sugar refineries, food production plants, etc, to reproduce their real behaviour.
Cryogenics: EcosimPro has been used to model cryogenics systems in systems as complex as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN to study and improve the strategy for the cooling system. A set of coolants have been used with an operating temperature of around 4.5 K.
Fluid Systems: There is a power library for modelling fluid systems in one and two stages. Nowadays it is being used worldwide by companies in energy and aeronautics to model a wide variety of processes.
Control: Widely used in multi-disciplinary applications that require single-variable control systems, multi-variable control systems, advanced, predictive, etc. The modelling of this system is done naturally, by representing each physical component by a control component from EcosimPro.
Discrete Systems: EcosimPro is being used to model the complex baggage handling systems at Madrid Barajas Airport in relation to sizing and studies on design and bottlenecks.
