Bryan Bishop wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I'm searching today for information on either F/OSS projects or
> literature on electrical system simulation. I'm not sure if SPICES or
> ngspices is able to do what I want.
>
> In particular, I'd like to do a simulation where something absurd
> happens- like smashing a NEMA 5-15 plug into, say, a BS 546 outlet,
>   
Well beyond the physical damage that would probablly leave at least one 
of the plug and socket in a broken condition I imagine not a lot would 
happen to the cordset. Those kinds of things have plenty of safety 
margin built it. The appliance on the other end may be a different 
matter of course but it's not going to be any worse than plugging it 
into a travel adaptor in a european country.
>
> Math like Faraday's, Gauss', Kirchoff's, Ohm's, Norton's, Thevenin's,
> and Millman's theorems and laws are helpful, but they don't seem to
> tell me much about how badly things will fail. In mechanical design, I
> can do finite element analysis (FEA) and get some resulting deltas and
> graphs for showing a distribution of forces, heat, stress, etc., but
> that's with either finite elements or fluids, so what are my options
> in electronics?
>   
I think you will find a lot of simulator software allows you to specify 
maximum ratings of components and log if your simulation exceeds them.
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