EEEN30150 MODELLING AND SIMULATION

EEEN30150 MODELLING AND SIMULATION

To introduce MATLAB as a tool for programming, simulation and visualisation.

2. Background Information: In the previous introductory laboratory we saw some of the basic operations which are available in MATLAB. In this second introductory laboratory we wish to cover some more advanced topics, specifically programming in the sense of creating and using MATLAB function M-files; simulation in the sense of using the built-in ordinary differential equation solvers provided by MATLAB, specifically ode45 which will provide a method of checking our approximate solutions of differential equations; visualisation in the sense of presenting results, if not in the best manner possible, at least in a slightly more imaginative and elegant manner than just printing lists of numbers.

3.1. MATLAB Function M-files: MATLAB has a simple built-in facility for creating your own functions which, once created, are essentially indistinguishable from regular MATLAB functions. This permits you to collect relatively large numbers of commands together and run them together in a batch. In the previous laboratory one test problem was concerned with the MATLAB command log10. In some versions of MATLAB (it is unsure if it will work for all of the versions which you are using) one is permitted to see (some of) the code behind the function log10 by using the type command.