Case study 1: qualification of scientific software

When we have to program a scientific software package (e.g. [Ascend]) dedicated to the simulation of an industrial process (such as chemical distillation chain or energy production in a nuclear reactor), we cannot take into account all the parameters of the process. Therefore, the engineer must reduce the complexity of the process model so that it can be simulated. The various approximations that have to be made often induce a gap, which may or may not be important, between the results obtained using the simulation and the results obtained via measurements. So we use an “artifice” which allows us to fill the gap: we bias the software so that its results correspond to the measurements. This bias is applied via modification of the parameters of the model.