ThermoCycle: A Modelica library for the simulation of thermodynamic systems

This paper presents the results of an on-going project to develop ThermoCycle, an open Modelica library for the simulation of low-capacity thermodynamic cycles and thermal systems. Special attention is paid to robustness and simulation speed since dynamic simulations are often limited by numerical constraints and failures, either during initialization or during integration. Furthermore, the use of complex equations of state (EOS) to compute thermodynamic properties significantly decreases the simulation speed. In this paper, the approach adopted in the library to overcome these challenges is presented and discussed.