Enhancing engineering studies in developing countries using OpenModelica

Laboratory experiences are crucial for the students learning in higher educational institutions, and are specially required to ensure a high standard of education for engineering programs. However, for universities in developing countries, such as Bangladesh, it is difficult to provide state of the art laboratory facilities and associated support functions for specialized areas such as electrical power systems, mechanical engineering, etc., due to high capital and operational costs related to complex/dedicated equipment. In this paper, we propose the use of an open-standard-based modeling language and an open-source simulation software tool. The language used is Modelica, an equation-based object-oriented modeling language, and the open source simulation software used is OpenModelica. To illustrate the potential use of Modelica and OpenModelica when physical laboratories are unavailable and there is no access to proprietary software, different power system dynamic analysis studies are illustrated using test models from the OpenIPSL library.