Introduction to Modeling and Simulation

Power plant modeling plays a key role in many purposes, like process design assessment, the assessment, and prediction of plant performance, operating procedure evaluation, control system design, and system prognosis and diagnosis. The present chapter introduces the discipline of 0D/1D modeling applied to thermal hydraulics and their main applications to real-life systems: how 0D/1D modeling relates to the 3D physical equations, what are the fundamental assumptions underlying 0D/1D physical models and the main limitations of the numerical solvers commonly used for such models, what is the rationale for a 0D/1D component models library and what kinds of real-life systems can be modeled and simulated for different purposes (plant sizing, control, operation and maintenance, prognosis, diagnosis and monitoring). Also, in this chapter, many questions are answered: what is a system, what is a model and modeling, what is simulation and why is modeling important?