Interactive Dynamic-System Simulation

Book excerpt: Showing you how to use personal computers for modeling and simulation, Interactive Dynamic-System Simulation, Second Edition provides a practical tutorial on interactive dynamic-system modeling and simulation. It discusses how to effectively simulate dynamical systems, such as aerospace vehicles, power plants, chemical processes, control systems, and physiological systems. Written by a pioneer in simulation, the book introduces dynamic-system models and explains how software for solving differential equations works. After demonstrating real simulation programs with simple examples, the author integrates a new treatment of the difference equation programs needed to model sampled-data control systems with digital controllers. Subsequent chapters provide detailed programming know-how. These chapters cover library, table-lookup, user-definable, limiter, switching, and noise functions; an experiment-protocol scripting language; powerful vector and matrix operations; and classical simulation programs that illustrate a number of useful programming tricks. The final chapter shows how experiment-protocol scripts and compiled DYNAMIC program segments can quickly solve mathematical problems, including fast graph plotting, Fourier transforms, and complex-number plots. Downloadable ResourcesThe accompanying downloadable resources contain a complete, industrial-strength simulation program package. To install the ready-to-run simulation system, simply copy a single Windows or Linux folder from the downloadable resources. You can then run and modify every program example in the text or try your own projects. For truly interactive modeling, screen-edited programs are run-time compiled and immediately produce solution displays on a typed run command.