solar power plant real time simulation/ visualization (sponsored by tietronix software inc.)

SOLAR POWER PLANT REAL TIME SIMULATION/ VISUALIZATION(SPONSORED BY TIETRONIX SOFTWARE INC.)

Team # 6December 03, 2009

MENTORS AND TEAM INFORMATION Mentors:

Michel Izygon - Michel.Izygon@tietronix.com Peter Armstrong -

Peter.Armstrong-1@tietronix.com Insia Iftiqhar - Insia.Iftiqhar@tietronix.com Claus Nilsson - Claus.Nilsson@tietronix.com

Team members: Ngoc Vu - vnngoc156@yahoo.com Hai Tran - tranh67276@uhcl.edu Hai Nguyen - nngochai@yahoo.com Tuan Le -

hoangdieu_vietnam@yahoo.com

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TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Project Requirements Applied Technologies Current Results Future Works Program Demo References

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PROJECT INTRODUCTIONCapstone Project Fall 2009 - Team 6

4Solar Power Thermal Plant

REQUIREMENTS Develop a photo-realistic 3D simulation

of a solar power plant Render shadows of heliostats and

towers Viewable from any perspectives Accurately model the motion of the sun

and heliostats Update simulation faster than in real-

time

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SHADINGThe sunlight to a heliostat is blocked by front heliostats.

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APPLIED TECHNOLOGIES OpenGL

Open Graphics Library Support rendering 3D simulation

CUDA General purpose parallel computing

architecture developed by NVIDIA Improve program performance

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APPLIED MECHANISMS FOR SHADING Mathematical mechanism

Specifies all the vertices of the shadow area

Requires much of GPU computations Stencil Shadow Volume

Not specifies the vertices of the shadow area

Requires less computations on GPU Making use of OpenGL

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SIMPLE PROGRAM FLOWCapstone Project Fall 2009 - Team 6

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Calculate vertices

Render heliostats (4 vertices)

Heliostats' center

coordinate

CUDA OPENGL

Render shadows

Shadow Volume

Thermal Plant Configuration

- Tower location- Time and date- Heliostat’s width

and height- …

OPENGLCapstone Project Fall 2009 - Team 6

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Thermal Plant Configuration

- Tower location- Time and date- Heliostat’s

width and height

- …

….

Heliostats’ center

coordinate

V1 V2V3 V4

V1 V2V3 V4

V1 V2V3 V4

V1 V2V3 V4

Heliostat 1

Heliostat 2

Heliostat 3

Heliostat n

OPENGL

….

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Thermal Plant Configuration

- Tower location- Time and date- Heliostat’s

width and height

- …Heliostats’ center

coordinate

Thread 1

Thread 2

Thread 3

Thread n

CUDA

….

V1 V2V3 V4

V1 V2V3 V4

V1 V2V3 V4

V1 V2V3 V4

Heliostat 1

Heliostat 2

Heliostat 3

Heliostat n

OPENGL

….

STENCIL SHADOW VOLUMECapstone Project Fall 2009 - Team 6

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STENCIL SHADOW VOLUME (CONT.)Capstone Project Fall 2009 - Team 6

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PROGRAM FLOWCapstone Project Fall 2009 - Team 6

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PROGRAM DEMOCapstone Project Fall 2009 - Team 6

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DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED Inaccurate sun position calculation Difficulties in implementation of

shadow casting Complex shading and blocking

computation Inaccurate shadow mapping technique Shadow volume technique itself

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CURRENT RESULTS Rendering heliostats, tower and receiver Shadows of basic objects such as

heliostats, tower, and receiver Flexible camera position Parameter customization Frame rate: 14 ~ 17 fps Simulation clock with highest

visualization speed of 32x

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FUTURE WORKS Apply texture on ground Render sky dome Render blocking Environment reflection on heliostats Performance improvement Apply mathematical computation of

shading and blocking

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REFERENCES OpenGL SuperBible, 4th Edition

(Addison Wesley, 2007) OpenGL Programming Guide. The

Official Guide to Learning OpenGL Version 2.1. 6th edition (2007)

An Introduction to Graphics Programming with OpenGL (Toby Howard)

NVIDIA CUDA Programming Guide 2.3

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CUDA (COMPUTE UNIFIED DEVICE ARCHITECTURE)

General purpose parallel computing architecture developed by NVIDIA

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