Hello,
we need to model an electric winch. A tether (cable) is reeled out. We want to model the tether
as a number of segments, each of them consists of a point-mass and a spring-damper.
Aerodynamic drag shall also be attached.
We have a Java model, that works like this: During reel-out a new segment is added,
each time when the last segment reaches the maximal segment length. The new segment
has an initial length of zero, which is continuously increased during reel-out, until another
new segment is needed. Now my question:
- Is it possible in modelica, to add components dynamically during runtime?
  We want to add new point-masses and new spring-damper elements, and also
  remove them, if they are not needed, because the tether is getting shorter by
  reeling in.
- Is it possible in modelica, to change the mass and the initial length of a spring-damper
  at runtime? Is there a big simulation time penalty, if we do this?

Best regards:
Uwe Fechner
www.kitepower.eu