ABSTRACT
When building any simulation diagram, there are three major types of blocks that are needed: sources, systems, and readout (graphing) devices. Let's first discuss the SOURCE type of blocks. These are signal sources of various kinds that you use to provide the driving inputs for your physical system. SOURCES are also sometimes used to provide other features of an equation that involve time functions that are completely known before the simulation is run. In our example, the time-varying damper requires a specific time function for its simulation. Of the various SOURCES which SIMULINK provides, we will discuss only nine of the most commonly needed. These are shown in Fig. 6-15. Six of these are accessed from the SOURCES icon on the main menu and the other three from the EXTRAS icon. When you double-click on the SOURCES icon you will get a new detailed SOURCES menu which will include six of the items shown in Fig. 6-15, plus some
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more which we here ignore. If, for example, you needed one or more constants as inputs in your simulation, you would now "click and drag" one of these icons from the SOURCES menu onto your "empty" block diagram window, "dropping" it, for the time being into any convenient location. That is, at the beginning, we simply gather up all the different individual icons we need; we will later arrange and connect them properly. Recall that you only need to initially get one of each icon; you can later copy it as many times as needed.
