Separation Analysis with OpenModelica

Abstract: When launching a satellite a separation system is used to keep the satellite attached to a launch vehicle during ascent and to separate it from the launch vehicle while in space. In separation analysis the separation is studied by simulations to see if requirements on the system can be fulfilled. The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate if separation analysis can be done using the modeling program OpenModelica and to evaluate OpenModelica and compare it to other modeling programs. OpenModelica is free software implementing the Modelica language, which is an object-oriented language for modeling and simulation of complex physical systems. Modelica uses equation-based modeling, this means that the physical behaviour of a model is described by differential, algebraic and discrete equations and no particular variable needs to be solved manually. The work is divided into two parts. The main part is to implement a mathematical model of a separation system in OpenModelica, simulate it and study the behaviour of the system. A Monte Carlo method, which randomly generates values for uncertain model parameters, is used when simulating the model. The other part of the work is to evaluate OpenModelica and compare it with other modeling programs, such as Matlab/Simulink, C/C++ and JAVA to see advantages and disadvantages with OpenModelica.