Real time simulation: Recent progress & challenges

In order to compete in the global market, engineering organizations are under increasing pressure to design, develop, and deploy products in the market place as quickly as possible with first time quality. In order to achieve these objectives, it is necessary to streamline the design and development process, namely, “transfer of analytical design of Intelligence to Mechatronics intelligence” in an efficient and expedient manner. An increasing pressure exists on the development cycle of control systems to serve this widening application spectrum. The time-to-market of a new product often determines its commercial success. Consequently, design problems have to be discovered as early as possible in the design process in order to take remedial actions. Efficient and accurate tools and procedures are required to support short yet successful development processes. Over the last two decades, commercially available computer has become both increasingly powerful and increasingly affordable. This, in turn, has led to the emergence of highly sophisticated simulation software applications that not only enable high-fidelity simulation of dynamic systems and related controls, but also automatic code generation for implementation in industrial controllers. Simulation tools have been widely used for the design and improvement of electrical systems since the mid twentieth century. The evolution of simulation tools has progressed in step with the evolution of computing technologies. In last ten years, computing technologies have improved dramatically in performance and become widely available at a steadily decreasing cost. Consequently, simulation tools have also seen dramatic performance gains and steady cost decreases. Researchers and engineers now have access to affordable, high-performance simulation tools that were previously too cost prohibitive, except for the largest manufacturers and utilities. The purpose of this paper is to review major milestones that set the stage for the development of the today's real time simulation including sufficient detail to acquaint reader with their basic principles, strength, challenges and its applications.