Simulink Basics

by F Marquez

Simulink is a block diagram environment for multidomain simulation and Model-Based Design. It supports system-level design, simulation, automatic code generation, and continuous test and verification of embedded systems. Simulink provides a graphical editor, customizable block libraries, and solvers for modeling and simulating dynamic systems. It is integrated with MATLAB(R), enabling you to incorporate MATLAB algorithms into models and export simulation results to MATLAB for further analysis.Simulink is a graphical modeling and simulation environment for dynamic systems. You can create block diagrams, where blocks represent parts of a system. A block can represent a physical component, a small system, or a function; an input/output relationship fully characterizes the block. The definition of a block is only complete with its inputs and outputs and this task relates to the goal of the model. For example, the cart velocity may be a natural choice as an output if the modeling goal does not involve its location. Simulink provides block libraries that are collections of blocks grouped by functionality. For example, to model a megaphone that simply multiplies its input by a constant, you would use a Gain block from the Math Operations library.In simulation, time progresses differently from a real clock. Each time step takes as much time as it takes to finish the computations for that time step, whether that time step represents a fraction of a second or a few years. Often, the effect of a component's input on its output is not instantaneous. For example, turning on a heater does not result in an instant change in temperature. Rather, this action provides input to a differential equation, and the history of the temperature (a state) is also a factor. When simulation requires solving a differential or difference equation, Simulink employs memory and numerical solvers to compute the state values for the time step.At each time step, Simulink computes new values for signals and states. By contrast, you specify parameters when you build the model and can occasionally change them while simulation is running.You can use Simulink to model a system and then simulate the dynamic behavior of that system. The basic techniques you use to create a simple model in this tutorial are the same as those you use for more complex models. Modeling is a way to create a virtual representation of a real-world system. You can simulate this virtual representation under a wide range of conditions to see how it behaves. Modeling and simulation are especially valuable for testing conditions that are difficult to reproduce with hardware prototypes alone. This is especially true in the early phase of the design process when hardware is not yet available. Iterating between modeling and simulation can improve the quality of the system design early, by reducing the number of errors found later in the design process.

208 pages, Paperback

Published March 14, 2019