A distributed UNIX-based simulator
P.W. Wyatt, Thomas R. Arnold, K.E. Hammer, J.S. Peery, G.A. McKaskle · University of North Texas Digital Library (University of North Texas) · 1990
One of the problems confronting the designers of simulators over the last ten years -- particularly the designers of nuclear plant simulators -- has been how to accommodate the demands of their customers for increasing verisimilitude, especially in the modeling of as-faulted conditions. The demand for the modeling of multiphase multi-component thermal-hydraulics, for example, imposed a requirement that taxed the ingenuity of the simulator software developers. Difficulty was encountered in fitting such models into the existing simulator framework -- not least because the real-time requirement of training simulation imposed severe limits on the minimum time step. In the mid-1980's, two evolutions that had been proceeding for some time culminated in mature products of potentially great utility to simulation. One was the emergence of low-cost work stations featuring not only versatile, object-oriented graphics, but also considerable number-crunching capabilities of their own. The other was the adoption of UNIX as a standard'' operating system common to at least some machines offered by virtually all vendors. As a result, it is possible to design a simulator whose graphics and executive functions are off-loaded to one or more work stations, which are designed to handle such tasks. The number-crunching duties are assigned to another machine, which has been designed expressly for that purpose. This paper deals with such a distributed UNIX-based simulator developed at the Savannah River Laboratory using graphics supplied by Texas A M University under contract to SRL.