cantera/doc/sphinx/cxx-guide/simple-example.rst
2012-04-04 18:45:37 +00:00

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A Very Simple C++ Program
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A short C++ program that uses Cantera is shown below. This program reads in a
specification of a gas mixture from an input file, and then builds a new object
representing the mixture. It then sets the thermodynamic state and composition
of the gas mixture, and prints out a summary of its properties.
.. literalinclude:: demo1a.cpp
:language: c++
This program produces the output below::
temperature 500 K
pressure 202650 Pa
density 0.361163 kg/m^3
mean mol. weight 7.40903 amu
1 kg 1 kmol
----------- ------------
enthalpy -2.47725e+06 -1.835e+07 J
internal energy -3.03836e+06 -2.251e+07 J
entropy 20700.1 1.534e+05 J/K
Gibbs function -1.28273e+07 -9.504e+07 J
heat capacity c_p 3919.29 2.904e+04 J/K
heat capacity c_v 2797.09 2.072e+04 J/K
X Y Chem. Pot. / RT
------------- ------------ ------------
H2 0.8 0.217667 -15.6441
H 0 0
O 0 0
O2 0 0
OH 0 0
H2O 0.1 0.243153 -82.9531
HO2 0 0
H2O2 0 0
AR 0.1 0.53918 -20.5027
As C++ programs go, this one is *very* short. It is the Cantera equivalent of
the "Hello, World" program most programming textbooks begin with. But it
illustrates some important points in writing Cantera C++ programs.
Catching :ct:`CanteraError` exceptions
======================================
The entire body of the program is put inside a function that is invoked within
a ``try`` block in the main program. In this way, exceptions thrown in the
function or in any procedure it calls may be caught. In this program, a
``catch`` block is defined for exceptions of type :ct:`CanteraError`. Cantera
throws exceptions of this type, so it is always a good idea to catch them. In
the ``catch`` block, function :ct:`showErrors` may be called to print the error
message associated with the exception.
The ``report`` function
=======================
The :ct:`report` function generates a nicely-formatted report of the properties of
a phase, including its composition in both mole (X) and mass (Y) units. For
each species present, the non-dimensional chemical potential is also printed.
This is handy particularly when doing equilibrium calculations. This function
is very useful to see at a glance the state of some phase.