Computational steering in the problem solving environment WBCSim

Abstract

SUMMARYComputational steering allows scientists to interactively control a numerical experiment and adjust parameters of the computation on-the-fly and explore "what if" analysis. Computational steering effectively reduces computational time, makes research more efficient, and opens up new product design opportunities. There are several problem solving environments (PSEs) featuring computational steering. However, there is hardly any work explaining how to enable computational steering for PSEs embedded with legacy simulation codes. This paper describes a practical approach to implement computational steering for such PSEs by using WBCSim as an example. WBCSim is a Web based simulation system designed to increase the productivity of wood scientists conducting research on wood-based composites manufacturing processes. WBCSim serves as a prototypical example for the design, construction, and evaluation of small-scale PSEs. Various changes have been made to support computational steering across the three layers-client, server, developer-comprising the WBCSim system. A detailed description of the WBCSim system architecture is presented, along with a typical scenario of computational steering usage.

Petri Net-Based Collaborative Simulation and Steering of Biochemical Reaction Networks

“…Computational steering [27,28,30,32] is the tight coupling of visualisation and simulation; the user can change simulation parameters while the simulation is in progress. In other words, computational steering can be described as a remote control of a long running application [28].…”

“…Systems biologists need to interact with their experiments and with each others by changing some key parameters and asking what-if-questions. Furthermore, such applications are based on the batch approach that disconnects the users from their experiments during the simulation [30]. Our aim is to overcome these limitations by integrating computational steering with the simulation of biochemical reaction networks.…”

“…However, they are used to build new applications or require modifications of the application source code. In other words, they often assume the existence of legacy simulation code which needs to be integrated in such environments [30]. Thus, they are inapplicable if the source code is unavailable.…”