Modeling Requirements for the Parallel Simulation of Hydraulic Systems

Parallel simulation of systems offers the benefit of increased speed of execution, but requires the system model to be partitioned to enable numerical tasks to be performed concurrently. Hydraulic systems are characterized 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 component models to be decoupled for the current time step, enabling a parallel solution; the inputs to each component model are delayed outputs from connected models. This paper describes a simulation environment suitable for the simulation of hydraulic system performance, using the transmission line modeling approach for the pipelines, decoupling the component models in a hydraulic circuit simulation. Computationally efficient models for cavitation and friction are developed and evaluated. In addition, partitioning strategies for parallel operation are outlined, although these have yet to be implemented.