Siconos

SICONOS - SImulation and COntrol of NOnsmooth Systems

Developer(s)	INRIA
Stable release	3.7.1 / September 2014
Development status	Active
Written in	C++, C, Python
Operating system	Linux, Mac, Windows
Type	Framework
License	GPL
Website	siconos.gforge.inria.fr

SICONOS is an Open Source scientific software primarily targeted at modeling and simulating non-smooth dynamical systems (NSDS):^[1]

• Mechanical systems (Rigid body or solid) with Unilateral contact and Coulomb friction as we find in Non-smooth mechanics, Contact dynamics or Granular material.
• Switched Electrical Circuit such as Power converter, Rectifier, Phase-locked loop (PLL) or Analog-to-digital converter
• Sliding mode control systems

Other applications are found in Systems and Control (hybrid systems, differential inclusions, optimal control with state constraints), Optimization (Complementarity problem and Variational inequality) Biology Gene regulatory network, Fluid Mechanics and Computer graphics, ...

Components

The software is based on 3 main components^[2]

• Siconos/Numerics (C API). Collection of low-level algorithms for solving basic Algebra and optimization problems arising in the simulation of nonsmooth dynamical systems
  • Linear complementarity problem (LCP)
  • Mixed linear complementarity problem (MLCP)
  • Nonlinear complementarity problem (NCP)
  • Quadratic programming problems (QP)
  • Friction-contact problems (2D or 3D) (Second-order cone programming (SOCP))
  • Primal or Dual Relay problems
• Siconos/Kernel. API C++ that allows one to model and simulate the nonsmooth dynamical systems. It contains
  • Dynamical systems classes : first order one, Lagrangian systems, Newton-Euler systems
  • Nonsmooth laws : complementarity, Relay, Friction, Contact, impact
• Siconos/Front-end (API Python) Mainly an auto-generated SWIG interface of the API C++ which a special support for data structure.

Performance

According to peer reviewed studies published by its developers, Siconos was approximately five times faster than Ngspice or ELDO (a commercial SPICE by Mentor Graphics) and 250 times faster than PLECS when solving a buck converter.^[3][4]

See also

• Differential inclusion (an extension of the notion of differential equation) on which much of the NSDS theory relies
• Non-smooth mechanics
• Contact dynamics
• Rigid body dynamics
• Collision detection
• Complementarity theory
• Stiffness, which affects ODEs/DAEs for functions with "sharp turns" and which affects numerical convergence

References

1. Acary, Vincent; Brogliato, Bernard (2008), "Numerical Methods for Nonsmooth Dynamical Systems", Lecture Notes in Applied and Computational Mechanics, 35
2. Acary, Vincent; Perignon, Franck (2007), "An introduction to Siconos.", INRIA Technical Report, pp. 45. RT-0340
3. Vincent Acary (2012). "Time-Stepping via Complementarity". In Francesco Vasca and Luigi Iannelli. Dynamics and Control of Switched Electronic Systems: Advanced Perspectives for Modeling, Simulation and Control of Power Converters. Springer Science & Business Media. pp. 446–447. ISBN 978-1-4471-2884-7.
4. Acary, V., Bonnefon, O., Brogliato, B. (July 2010) "Time-Stepping Numerical Simulation of Switched Circuits Within the Nonsmooth Dynamical Systems Approach", Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems, IEEE Transactions on (Volume:29, Issue: 7), pp. 1042-1055, doi:10.1109/TCAD.2010.2049134

External links

• The official Siconos site
• other related publications