Computer aided modelling and simulation of physical systems using bond graphs and matching software

Physical systems simulation by means of computers is a very important tool in to days engineering world. With simulation engineers can evaluate the performance of proposed or existing systems or a change of operating policy. General purpose simulation programs have been developed since the early 1960's and these programs have generally similar structure and offer several choices of integration and analysis. Despite the fact almost no real programming skill is needed to use a continuous system simulator the preparation of a mathematical model in the proper form is not a trivial task, particularly when the system is nonlinear and involves more than one energy domain. The central theme of this paper is therefore, to introduce bond graphs and matching software as an educational aid engineering tool for modelling and simulation of physical systems.