From: <seawasp@unixd1.cis.pitt.edu>
Subject: TECH: Number-generating steam plant simulator wanted
Date: 6 Apr 92 19:26:23 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh





	I'm hoping there are a few wizards out there who can help me 
with the following problem.

	I need a program which will simulate, NUMBER-wise (the displays
will be driven by the numbers -- display program already exists) the
operation of a simplistic steam plant: i.e., boiler with water, steam to 
turbine, turbine spinning, generating power from the spin, condensing
the water, and returning the water to the boiler for another cycle.

	The inputs which are to be able to be adjusted by the user
(possibly by running this program as a subprogram) are :
	1) Fuel flow to boiler
	2) Water to boiler from condenser -- obviously with controls to prevent
overfilling boiler or allowing water to come from condenser when there
is none
	3) A makeup pump (for possible lost water), only on/off in nature.
I'd like, however, to be able to possibly modify the amount of water that
the makeup pump delivers when on, not while running the program but to
be able to set it at different levels.

	The outputs are to be the boiler water level and the speed of
the turbine.

	Concealed inputs (ones that the USER won't control, but which
will be passed to the simulator from the external program) will be
the load on the generator and "trip" inputs -- booleans which will trigger
a FAILURE in some part of the system, either a boiler leak, a steam leak,
or a condenser leak.

	The program is to be run on a Sun SPARCstation. The other programs
it is to work with are written in C, so obviously it's got to be compatible
with the other programs.

	One thing it does NOT have to do is be mathematically/physically
perfect. It DOES have to be good enough so that an engineer could watch
the behavior of the system and say "close enough", but it doesn't have
to do thermodynamic modeling of a steamplant cycle if simpler mathematics
will do.

	I'm SURE some such programs exist -- it's a relatively elementary
problem in engineering; I'm looking for a good source program, one that
has been tested (hopefully) and I can get working quickly.


			Thanks,

					Ryk E. Spoor
				        SEAWASP@vm2.cis.pitt.edu
				     or seawasp@unixd1.cis.pitt.edu