Development of a simulation platform for continuous systems modelling

A prototype simulation platform for modelling of continuous systems, called PROSIM, is currently under development. PROSIM aims at providing a complete simulation environment enabling the modelling of system in a very structured and hierarchical way, while at the same time easing the work of the user with the help of graphical tools and symbolic processing. A graphical interface helps defining components, assemble them into systems, run the simulation and display the results. A symbolic processor is used to parse the equations entered by the user, simplify them, and compute a symbolic Jacobian matrix used to solve the equations with a Newton-Raphson procedure. The application of the program to the simulation of a simple water distribution network is shown as an example.