Posted: 17 Oct 2011
Taking a pipeline simulation and tuning it in order for it to match reality in an online application can be an extremely time consuming and laborious task. Atmos SIM has a unique tuning aid feature built in to help pipeline designers select the required property values for known target setpoints.
Imagine the situation where a simple pipeline is known to have a pressure at the outlet of ‘X’ with a flow of ‘Y’. In most modeling applications the process of achieving this target outlet pressure would involve tweaking various properties to in order to attain the desired end constraints. The tuning assistant automates this laborious process.
A user would define their setpoints and then select which model objects to vary. Normally this ‘tunable’ object would be a pipe or series of pipes but other objects such as valves, regulators, and resistance elements are also possible.
Various properties of the selected objects can then be selected along with the max/min limits for the preferred property. Typical properties would be roughness of a pipe or the flow coefficient of a valve.
Users can tune two ‘tunable’ properties at the same time.
Finally, a target value needs to be defined as this is the goal of the tuning automation. They then hit a button and the ‘tuning assistant’ finds the best value for the properties selected in order to meet the desired target.
The feature greatly reduces the engineering time to match a model to reality.