摘要
Numerical simulation of complex systems and components by computers is a fundamental phase of any modern engineering activity. The traditional methods of simulation typically entail long, iterative processes which lead to large simulation times, often exceeding transient real time. Artificial neural networks （ANNs） may be advantageous in this context, the main advantage being the speed of computation, the capability of generalizing from the few examples, robustness to noisy and partially incomplete data and the capability of performing empirical input-output mapping without complete knowledge of underlying physics. In this paper, the simulation of steam generator is considered as an example to show the potentialities of this tool. The data required for training and testing the ANN is taken from the steam generator at Abott Power Plant, Champaign （USA）. The total number of samples is 9600 which are taken at a sampling time of three seconds. The performance of boiler （drum pressure, steam flow rate） has been verified and tested using ANN, under the changes in fuel flow rate, air flow rate and load disturbance. Using ANN, input-output mapping is done and it is observed that ANN allows a good reproduction of non-linear behaviors of inputs and outputs.
