fluid conversion by an amount that varries in FlexSim

[leonize_meiring]

I’m modeling a grain elevator with trucks that either unload or load grain. Each truck has a tonnage value that varies (it follows an exponential distribution) stored in a label.

• For unloading, I use a separator to separate the grain from the truck and then send it to a conveyor that feeds a bin. I want the bin’s fluid content to increase by the exact tonnage stored in the truck’s label. I’m currently using an item-to-fluid converter for this step.

• For loading, the process is the reverse: the bin decreases and trucks leave with the amount of tonnage specified by their label. Here I’m using a fluid-to-item converter.

The problem is that both converters only accept fixed numeric values and not a distribution (or a label reference).

How can I set up the converters so that the bin increases/decreases according to the truck’s label value instead of a fixed number?

Here is the layout -  I also attached the model

[moehlmann_fe]

I believe the only way to do that with the fluid library objects would be to round the truck labels and choose the amount of fluid per item according to the decimal you are rouding to. (For example round to one decimal and use 0.1 fluid units per item/10 items per fluid unit.)

Since it looks like the fluid objects are only used to model the storage, you could also just not use them and implement the stored quantity as a Tracked Variable label on some placeholder object. See the attached example model for how that could function.

[leonize_meiring]

Hi, thank you for your response I did manage to get the blue trucks working by putting custom code on the fluid to item (on exit), but for some reason the same logic does not work on the fluid to item converter. Idid attach my newest model

I am not very familiar with process flows and how it interacts with the 3D environment, thus I am struggling to implement your model to my model, any advice maybe?

[moehlmann_fe]

Sorry for the late reply. The logic doesn't work on the FluidToItem object because it relies on reading a label on the item that denotes how much fluid it should represent. There is no item entering the FluidToItem, so you need to pull that information from somewhere else. The input should stay closed until the target quantity is known. You could do this for example by waiting for a truck to enter one of the combiners (see attached model).