POWERSYS’ SIMBA software is an innovative simulation tool that is primarily used for designing power converters and motor drive circuits, available as a desktop software or a limited online tool within a web browser. The key innovations that set SIMBA apart from competing solutions are:
- A new, adaptive type of transient solver that offers higher accuracy and speed of calculation
- An easy-to-use graphic interface that makes SIMBA more accessible to new users of simulation software, without requiring training
- A Python library that allows engineers to interface SIMBA with Python to run or enhance their simulation and analysis tasks
Python can be used, for example, to automate the design process, run advanced parametric studies, and/or implement machine learning algorithms for training a model using results or intelligently optimising a design. This adds a great degree of freedom and flexibility when using SIMBA.
The basic input to the simulation is a schematic, with a wide range of familiar circuit topologies available to start from – if required – and a component library that covers electrical (inductors, capacitors, power semiconductors, etc.), mechanical (motors, inertia and friction elements, etc.), thermal, and control devices.
From this input, the main simulation output is shown on a real-time scope that provides all the expected features for evaluating the performance of your design – instantaneous measurements, average and rms values, FFT calculations, etc. Other features of the simulation include:
- Automatic steady-state detection, useful for parametric analysis as time constants will vary
- AC sweep, meaning that users can determine open-loop and control-loop transfer functions
- Thermal analysis, with switching and conduction losses taken into account
- Parametric analysis
- C-code control
SIMBA also supports large-scale distributed computing using a single license, at no extra cost for multiple-machine workloads. This is especially useful for research work, and POWERSYS provides academic partnerships for free to students and professors when SIMBA is used for educational purposes. This means that there is a large community of SIMBA users, and POWERSYS encourages them to share ideas, report bugs, and suggest new features to help lead the development of this software platform.
If you would like to evaluate SIMBA for use in a commercial project, fill out the form below, and ipXchange will put you in touch with POWERSYS to discuss your requirements and whether SIMBA is the right fit for your application. This can usually be determined over the course of a 10-minute discussion, after which POWERSYS can grant a limited-term free trial for engineers to see if the environment works for them.
