Hardware-in-the-loop Simulation of a Pumping Station : Design and implementation of a Python-based simulation program

Sammanfattning

The use of simulation enables testing of a system without the need for a complete physical system, while also having the advantages of lower cost and fewer practical limits compared to field tests. Hardware may be integrated into the simulation loop, such a simulation is defined as a Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulation. The pump is the most energy-consuming part of a pumping station, thus improvement and assessment of the pump controller are two of the main considerations in the development of pumping stations. Nevertheless, the developers do not always have access to a real pumping station to run tests on. A HIL simulator that imitates parts of a pumping station while including a real controller in the simulation is therefore desirable for the development of pump controllers.In this thesis, a mathematical model of a pumping station was built based on the physical features of different components, and a HIL simulation was implemented with the programming language Python, in which a real controller was integrated into the simulation loop. Through a three-hour-long simulation run, the functionality of the simulator has been analyzed, and the simulation accuracy was evaluated by comparing simulated results to real data. The results showed that among the 10 800 simulated data points of the water level, there were \(43\) (\(\approx 0.39\%\)) that had a relative change larger than \(30\%\) or less than \(-30\%\) with respect to the field data. This thesis contributes to the field of Python-based simulation of a pumping station, and serves as a foundation for future improvement for the host company.