About the Book
Co-simulation – a properly defined and already thoroughly researched topic, some would think. One of the first things made clear in this book is that not even a universally gratifying definition for this term can be found. Although the vast areas of application and multitude of theoretical work in this field is not denied but even extensively described, the need for further investigations is explicitly shown in the empirical survey conducted amongst more than fifty experts and the statistical analysis of selected literature in this area. In addition, the author presents a fairly untouched subject within co-simulation of continuous systems: hierarchical approaches, where one co-simulation may coordinate further co-simulations beneath on several levels. These methods can assuage the trade-off between accuracy and speed, which in traditional co-simulation depends on the one, common macro step size, by allowing different synchronization step sizes on every co-simulation level. In addition, the author shows that while consistency is maintained, numerical stability can even be enhanced by the sensible introduction of further co-simulation levels, thus tackling one of the currently pressing challenges highlighted by the survey.
About the Author
Irene Hafner (ORCID iD 0000−0001−7760−5831) has studied Technical Mathematics at TU Wien. Already in her bachelor program, she became interested in modeling and simulation of physical systems. During her master studies, she worked as tutor and project assistant at TU Wien. In her master thesis, she explored the possibilities of co-simulation with the middleware Building Controls Virtual Test Bed (BCVTB) applied to production facilities. Afterwards, she deepened her research on multirate and co-simulation methods in this thesis and her work at dwh GmbH, where she is currently employed. There, she continues to apply and extend her knowledge on physical modeling, co-simulation, hybrid simulation, web programming and machine learning. Applications in industrial as well as research projects range from Smart Energy Systems and production facility optimization to error detection in micro sensors.
