Investigating communication and step-size behaviour for co-simulation of hybrid physical systems

This paper discusses the method of cooperative simulation of discrete and continuous models with the Building Controls Virtual Test Bed, a software environment that allows coupling different simulation programs. In the course of a project aiming the energy optimization in cutting factories, models of machines of differing complexity and a building containing them have to be implemented to further simulate the thermal processes. Since all partial models require individual modelling approaches, solver time steps, solvers or even simulators, the method of co-simulation is considered. The partial models will be implemented with Modelica, MATLAB, Simulink and Simscape and accessed with the co-simulation tool BCVTB. The simulation results show that this method of co-simulation can be sufficient for the needs of describing thermal systems with large time constants but has to be found insufficient for simulations requiring high accuracy and variable step solvers in the overall simulation.