Scuba Simulator

This repository contains a Simulink® and Simscape™ project for modeling the vertical dynamics and gas-system behavior of a scuba diver.

An overview of the project is available in the accompanying Simulink blog post: https://blogs.mathworks.com/simulink/2026/07/02/my-scuba-diving-simulator/. The repository is organized around a reusable plant model, custom Simscape components, supporting simulation harnesses, MATLAB® scripts, and project documentation.

Use this simulator to:

• Demonstrate custom Simscape domain patterns for pressure-driven gas systems without reducing the scuba equipment topology to signal-only approximations.
• Exercise buoyancy-control algorithms against a physical plant that couples depth, breathing, gas consumption, buoyancy, drag, and equipment behavior.
• Teach dive physics

The scuba diver model is models/Scuba_Diver.slx, which represents a 1-DOF scuba diver plant with Simulink interfaces for buoyancy-control commands and lung volume input, and outputs for depth and vertical velocity. The plant combines a custom gas domain with translational mechanics to represent the interaction between gas storage, regulation, breathing, BCD inflation and purge behavior, buoyancy, drag, and diver mass properties.

The custom physical modeling implementation is defined under +scuba/. This includes the diver body component in +scuba/DiverBody.ssc, the custom gas domain in +scuba/+gas/underwaterGas.ssc, and the gas-system elements in +scuba/+gas/+elements/, including the tank, gas volume, first-stage and second-stage regulators, lungs, BCD bladder, inflate and purge valves, overpressure relief valve, ambient reference, and related assets.

The models/ directory contains the reusable plant and associated harness models:

Component tests:

• models/harnesses/bcd_test.slx: Buoyancy Control Device test harness
• models/harnesses/tank_test.slx: Air tank test harness
• models/harnesses/lung_test.slx: Diver lungs test harness System tests:
• models/descent_test.slx: closed-loop harness with Stateflow®-based depth control logic
• models/breath_test.slx: harness for breathing and gas-consumption studies

Full simulation:

• models/fullDiveHarness.slx: harness for complete hour-long dive profile

Diver model:

• models/Scuba_Diver.slx: reusable subystem plant model

Components library:

• models/scuba_lib.slx: generated Simscape library built from the .ssc source files

The scripts/ directory contains MATLAB utilities for project support and library generation:

• scripts/rebuildScubaLib.m: rebuilds the Simscape library into models/scuba_lib.slx

The tests/ directory contains MATLAB Test classes used to run and plot selected studies:

• tests/testDescent.m: runs fullDiveHarness through a one hour dive profile
• tests/testDepth.m: runs breath_test across multiple depths and plots tank pressure behavior
• tests/testDescent.m: runs descent_test across multiple parameter values and plots depth response
• tests/testBCD.m:
• tests/testTank.m:
• tests/testLungs.m:

The docs/ directory contains project documentation, including specifications and development notes. In particular, docs/specs/plant-models/scuba-diver/ contains system, architecture, controller, and implementation documents related to the scuba diver plant model.

Repository Structure

• models/: plant and harness models
• +scuba/: custom Simscape source code and assets
• data/: Simulink data dictionary
• scripts/: MATLAB support scripts
• tests/: MATLAB simulation-study scripts
• docs/: specifications and project documentation
• .satk/: Simulink Agentic Toolkit custom libraries requirements

Requirements

• MATLAB® R2026a
• Simulink®
• Simscape™
• Stateflow™

Getting Started

1. Open scuba-buyancy.prj in MATLAB to load the project.
2. Run scripts/rebuildScubaLib.m if the custom Simscape library needs to be regenerated from source.
3. Open models/descent_test.slx, models/breath_test.slx, or models/fullDiveHarness.slx to run a harness model.
4. Open models/Scuba_Diver.slx to inspect or reuse the standalone plant.