MODELING REQUIREMENTS FOR THE PARALLEL SIMULATION OF HYDRAULIC SYSTEMS

Parallel simulation of systems offers the benefit of increased speed o f execution, but requires the system model to be partitioned to enable numerical tasks to be performed concurrently. Hydraulic systems are c haracterized by a transport delay in the pipelines connecting physical components, which is due to the propagation of waves at the speed of sound through the fluid medium. The transmission delay allows componen t models to be decoupled for the current time step, enabling a paralle l solution; the inputs to each component model are delayed outputs fro m connected models. This paper describes a simulation environment suit able for the simulation of hydraulic system performance, using the tra nsmission line modeling approach for the pipelines, decoupling the com ponent models in a hydraulic circuit simulation. Computationally effic ient models for cavitation and friction are developed and evaluated. I n addition, partitioning strategies for parallel operation are outline d, although these have yet to be implemented.