Freesteam
From ASCEND
This page documents an experimental feature. You can help out by testing it and recording your experiences.
freesteam is a C++ library that allows the properties of water and steam to be calculated according the method described by the International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS). Some work has been done to connect freesteam to ASCEND, and useful results can be obtained already, although some finesse still needs to be added, including
- support for derivatives. At present derivatives are calculated in an ad-hoc way by ASCEND using finite difference approximation.
- support for regions. Using the ASCEND conditional modelling capabilities, we can model the transitions between fluid phases with much greater precision than currently.
- 'smart' solving. The current black box implementation for external relations requires the user to specify which variables are 'outputs' and which are 'inputs'. freesteam is arguably better placed to make that decision (it knows how the steam properties correlations are constructed internally), but this would require a different approach to black boxes in ASCEND.
For an example using freesteam see Worked examples.
freesteam homepage: http://freesteam.sourceforge.net/
