The accuracy and efficiency of a MATLAB-Simulink library for transient flow simulation of gas pipelines and networks

An efficient transient flow simulation for gas pipelines and networks is proposed. The proposed transient flow simulation is based on the transfer function models and MATLAB-Simulink. The equivalent transfer functions of the nonlinear governing equations are derived for different boundary conditions types. Next, a MATLAB-Simulink library is developed and proposed considering any boundary condition. To verify the accuracy and the computational efficiency of the proposed simulation, the results obtained are compared with those of the conventional finite difference schemes (such as total variation diminishing algorithms, method of lines, and other finite difference implicit and explicit schemes). The effect of the flow inertia is incorporated in this simulation. The accuracy and Computational efficiency of the proposed method are discussed for several test cases. It is shown that the proposed simulation has a sufficient accuracy and it is computationally more efficient than the other methods. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.