Opal-RT unveils RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator at NI Week 2002.

Opal-RT Technologies Inc. (www.opal-rt.com) has unveiled the RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator--the company's most advanced real-time engineering simulator to date. The announcement occurred as Opal-RT unveiled a demonstration model of the product at the opening of NI Week, taking place in Austin, Texas.

The RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator provides the most effective way to implement a model-based approach to design and testing of controllers for three-phase motors--while eliminating the risk of damaging the actual motor. Working with dynamic system modeling tools such as MATLAB / Simulink and MATRIXx / SystemBuild, the product allows real-time simulations of dynamic systems to be quickly created and used throughout the design cycle--from initial concepts to controller design, test and validation using hardware-in- the-loop.

Because of the high-speed switching and high-frequency transients normally associated with electric drive systems, it has generally been considered impossible to achieve the required fidelity unless highly specialized hardware and hand-written code is used. Through the use of standard PC technologies, the RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator provides a low-risk, low-cost entry point, while maintaining the scalability to add computation power by simply adding more processors. When combined with the QNX real-time operating system and automatic C-code generators, such as Real-Time Workshop for Simulink and AutoCode for SystemBuild, the RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator can achieve cycle rates below 50 microseconds, providing engineers with a platform that dramatically reduces design time and costs, particularly where traditional Design/Build/Test cycles represent a significant part of the design process.

"As the cost of computation power decreases, and new, innovative design tools proliferate, a model-based approach to early prototyping in software is emerging as a critical method of analyzing engineering designs," said Paul Goossens, Opal-RT Technologies Vice-President of Marketing. "Opal-RT's RT-LAB Engineering Simulators seize upon these trends by offering streamlined, low cost solutions, with unprecedented cycle rate performance."

The RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator smoothly transitions non-real-time models to real-time simulation by providing support for:

* Model Distribution: If a model is too complex to be computed within the time step, RT-LAB allows the model to be distributed over several processors, automatically handling the inter-processor communication through TCP/IP, FireWire or Shared Memory.

* Multirate Computation: Not all the components in a system may need to be executed at very small time steps. If the system can be separated into subsystems and be executed at varying update rates, cycles can be freed up for executing the subsystem(s) that need to be updated faster.

* Specialized Solvers: Opal-RT supplies libraries of specialized solvers that address many of the mathematical problems that arise when taking a model to real-time, such as new fixed-step solvers that reduce the errors introduced when replacing a variable step solver, and special solvers that address mixed mode errors by accounting for the difference between the update time step and the time an event occurred.

* Software and Hardware Interfaces: RT-LAB provides QNX drivers for a wide range of I/O hardware, as well as a comprehensive API that allows signals in the model to be used in other on-line software for visualization and interaction.

Opal-RT Technologies is a National Instruments Alliance Partner and will demonstrate the RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator, at NI Week in Austin, TX.

The demonstrated simulator distributes a model over three Pentium III processors running RT-LAB under QNX--one executing the model at 50 microseconds sampling time and communicating through shared memory, with a second processor managing NI PXI-6713 analog output and NI6602 timer I/O boards in order to test the controller. The NI PXI-6713 is an 8-channel, 12- bit analog output source, providing up to 1 MS/s per channel. In addition, the NI PXI-6713 features eight digital I/O lines, two 24-bit, 20 MHz counter/timers, and digital triggering capability.

The third processor simulates the control system at 150 microseconds, communicating with the other processors via FireWire. This processor also manages real-time data logging, on-the-fly model parameter modification, and Ethernet communication with the remote operator station running LabVIEW under Windows. Results are presented at the remote operator station, allowing the engineer to select any signals within the motor and adjust any parameters.

The RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator also includes ARTEMIS from Opal-RT--a library of specialized solvers that enhances the Simulink Power Systems Blockset in order to address all computational issues discussed above, as well as some circuit-simulation-specific problems.

Pricing on a base RT-LAB Electric Drive Simulator begins at around $35,000, but final price will depend on many factors, such as number of distributed processors, I/O hardware requirements, specialized development tools and libraries. All RT-LAB Simulators are available directly through Opal-RT at 1-877-935-2323.