Abstract

Very often EXCEL is called the most-used simulator – but also for continuous ODE systems? Generally, EXCEL allows easy implementation of recursive formula, as for the EULER solver (there exist also ODE solver macros for EXCEL). This student project reports on experiences with a basic recursive EULER solver for ARGESIM Benchmark C21, case study ‘RLC with Diode, and documents also the model set up for educational purposes. For the event handling of diode switching, two previous steps of the solver had to be observed – with reasonable results. Some problems occurred with the numerical treatment of the formula, because of the big range of parameters, leading to numerical extinction errors, especially in case of the Shockley formula interpolation. For the reasonable results, a very fine grid had to be used – an EXCEL table with 40.000 rows (and some for initialisation. The answer: EXCEL can also be used for continuous systems with events, but cannot be really recommended.