Using simullink in High School

Hi. I'm a teacher in a Technical High School. I'm newbie to Simulink. I'd like to know if it is the right software to help me to explain, in my lessons, in an easy way how works things like on-off control or proportional control. And, if yes, if there are tutorials and/or webinars that can help me to learn to do this in an easy and quick way. Thanks in advance

[Walter Roberson]

I think it could certainly be useful in high school.

Answer 1

[Sebastian Castro]

An example you can start with is the sldemo_househeat model, which models the heating logic for a simple thermal model of a house. You can find the documentation at this link.

If you look at the "Thermostat" subsystem, there is a "Relay" block which essentially turns a heater on/off based on the temperature difference between the measured and desired temperatures. This would be your "on-off" control.

The "Heater Subsystem", in a way, implements proportional control. The model seems to be that the heater air is at a controlled temperature, and the heat transfer is proportional to the temperature difference between the heater air and the house temperatures. You could likely modify this logic so your controlled variable is the amount of heat supplied by the heater, which would be a true proportional control example.

- Sebastian

Answer 2

[Akash Gopisetty]

You could also use the Zumo Robot if you wanted to mix things up with some fun low cost hardware. There is a Simulink library that you could use. It includes a line following demo where you could compare the performance of a on-off controller and a PID controller.

You can find more MATLAB based courseware for your school on the page below: http://www.mathworks.com/academia/highschool/courseware.html

-Akash