Problem Solving Environment (PSE) Airshed Model Manual.

Prepared by: Jerry Kuzminsky

ymk@edcenter.sdsu.edu

Introduction:

Dr. Donald Dabdub provided the Education Center on Computational Science and Engineering at San Diego State University with the preliminary version of the PSE Airshed Model software in the spring of 1999. Being one of the first to try the PSE package, the EdCenter team has decided to write a simple manual for this software.

The purpose of this document is to provide a concise manual for the PSE Airshed Model software and conduct the evaluation of its capabilities. I will go over each function one by one.

Installation:

The installation process itself is rather straightforward. After obtaining the software distribution (CD etc.) run the setup.exe file and confirm or edit the location where you want the software to be installed. After that, click on the large square button with an icon, which resembles the setup.exe one, and installation will be complete.

Running Demo

A demo project can be run from the Help menu to illustrate the program’s use and as a tutorial. The demo can be stopped or it’s actions configured from the DEMO CONFIG portion of the Help menu. You are able to adjust time between events, mouse speed and number of times the demo repeats.

Help:

The help portion is an important part of the PSE Airshed Model. It provides a more detailed manual and clues on how to manipulate the data. However, the help file needs to be renamed to Pseair.hlp from Pseair.hlp.hlp in order for help to work.

Menu selection “1027” will inform you of the version number and contact information.

Airshed Modeling:

Scaling Fields Numerical Sensitivity

Selecting this option will give access to File, Edit and View commands on the menu.

File menu provides for opening and creating a new file, executing aero model, executing gas model and exiting the program.

Executing the aero model menu will ask for the file with an extension *.ope and will proceed to execute the model.

Executing the gas model menu will ask for the file with an extension *.dbe that the model is saved as and then will proceed to execute the model. The progress bar will show the percentage done.

Edit menu has the tools to scale fields and change operators.

1. Under scale fields, the user is provided with the region map and is presented with host of tools to narrow down the area. You can use Circle, Rectangle and PolyLine options to outline the area to be examined. In addition, many other variables could be changed to allow experimentation with scale, view, conditions and many more. Pressing an “OK “ button will set the variables.

Choosing operations presents the user with check boxes, located on the panel.

Checking them on or off will select operations.

View menu provides you with a display of the contours and data series of the data loaded.

Selecting either of the above menus will bring up a map with the contours requested.

1. “Contours” view allows the user to plot contours of the area selected. Once again, number of options can be changed, including selecting a new area to “Plot”, “Day”, “Hour” etc..

Resulting image or matrix can be saved or plotted.

2. “Time Series” will plot the graph, based on the data saved or prepared before and opened under that menu. As in “Contours” menu, there are number of variables that can be set to experiment with the data.

Mathematical Sensitivity:

Mathematical Sensitivity provides the user with two menus: “File” and “Sensitivity”.

File menu gives tools for opening and creating new file, executing gas model and exiting the program.

In the Mathematical Sensitivity mode the program only allows for execution of the gas model.

Sensitivity controls provides for filing column data, run data sensitivity and view sensitivity results.

1. “Get Column Data “ opens a wizard that asks the user to specify several items, such as Initial Conditions, Meteorological Conditions etc.. Those can be selected from existing models or loaded from external file. The data can be modified, executed and then reloaded to fill the columns accordingly. Unfortunately, there’s no exit button on that menu so the user would have to exit, using “close” options on the opened window.

2. “Run Sensitivity” menu opens the DOS^â window and displays the script execution.

3. “View Sensitivity Results” will open a window which will provide information about existing dependent variables, allows to retrieve results, sorts independent variables etc.

Conclusion:

The general idea and design of the software is good. This software is considered a “Work in Progress.”