Modelling for efficient network system design considering physical processes and power consumption

Abstract

The subject matter of this article is a part of a broader and more complex issue: modelling of physical processes and assessment of various variables, such as power consumption, reliability, etc., for the purpose of designing systems, which involve network nodes affected by physical processes. The first part of this article is devoted to presentation of the tool called Energy Simulator. This tool is intended for the purpose of modelling of network systems or processes when power consumption is of interest. The Energy Simulator is constructed as a simulation service able to automatically (i. e. without any human action) construct a model from technical specifications and simulate new / innovative network or system designs and estimate energy use for them. Structurally, the Energy Simulator combines the usage of Simple Object Access Protocol together with calculation / simulation environment. This provides with the possibility of scheduling or parallelization of tasks. For the optimization of existing systems or for designing new ones, consumed energy estimate is a tremendously important part and this new tool could be a handy support for engineers, especially since new governmental laws or directives at the European Union level are being established with strict energy efficiency requirements. The usage of this tool is demonstrated for compressed air systems. We a priori assume that the power consumption in such systems is entirely governed by the thermodynamics of compressed air flow. Implementation of compressed air systems is based on the physical network concept when the system is represented as consisting of functional elements or subsystems that interact with each other by energy flow and variables of physical processes which impact the power consumption.