Fundamentals¶
The other tracks build flowsheets. This one explains what a simulator does with them: what a stream is, why a unit asks for the numbers it asks for, why a recycle takes iterations, how a thermodynamic model is chosen, and where the usual mistakes come from. Read it alongside the Beginner track, or come back to it whenever a result surprises you.
Every page ends with something to try in DWSIM, on the tutorial flowsheets that ship with the
program (Samples list on the welcome screen, Tutorial 01 to Tutorial 16), using the tools
built for learning: Flowsheet Check, Explain Result, Scenario Comparison, Live Sliders, the
McCabe-Thiele diagram, the Equation of State Explorer and the Property Package Comparison.
Pages¶
| # | Page | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Streams, State and Balances | What fixes the state of a stream, what a unit conserves, what an enthalpy value means |
| 2 | Degrees of Freedom | Why a unit asks for two numbers and no more, what a calculation mode is, how to read the Flowsheet Check |
| 3 | Recycles and Convergence | Why a loop needs a Recycle block, what the estimate and the tolerance do, why it oscillates |
| 4 | Choosing a Thermodynamic Model | Equations of state against activity coefficient models, azeotropes, interaction parameters, how to check a model against data |
| 5 | Units and Numbers | Unit systems, SI inside, mole against mass, reference states, decimal separators |
| 6 | Common Mistakes | The errors students make most, how DWSIM catches them, how to read the message |
| 7 | The Learning Tools | Where each teaching tool lives in both interfaces, what it answers, and its MCP name |
How to read this track¶
- Each page is short on procedure and long on reasons. When you need the clicks, the Beginner and Intermediate tutorials have them.
- Open a tutorial sample while you read: the numbers in the text are the numbers in the file.
- The tools are the same in the classic Windows interface and in the cross-platform interface; the menus are named the same way.