It sounds that easy: Simply switch of all pumps and heat sources to stop the output of a huge power plant. Which might already be non-trivial but daily business in real-life becomes literally a task of a life-time for simulation engineers. Almost any system simulation software struggles with thermo-hydraulic conditions at "close-to-zero-mass-flow" turning shut-off calculations into a never-ending odyssey. For sure not acceptable since on-off cycles have become a general procedure for many power plants.

A large part of the recently finished DynStart research project (expanding not less than 200 person months in total) funded by Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy on a decision by the German Bundestag was therefore dedicated to considerably enhance and speed-up "close-to-zero-mass-flow" simulations by taking all possible influences into account. The successful outcome and much more is now available to us with the latest release of ClaRa 1.4.1.

As always for free!

If you are interested in practical applications of ClaRa: Please download the presentations of our 3rd International ClaRa Users' Meeting from the ClaRa website.