Hi Abhijay,
In MATLAB, you could consider creating a persistent variable to store your thermodynamic properties structure. A persistent variable is a variable that retains its value in memory across multiple function calls within the same MATLAB session, without needing to be passed as an input argument to the function.
Here's an example of how you could implement this:
function properties = get_properties()
prop_struct = load('my_properties.mat');
properties = prop_struct;
In this example, the get_properties function checks if the persistent variable prop_struct has been initialized and loaded with the thermodynamic properties structure yet. If it hasn't, it loads the structure from a file (you can replace this with your own method of loading the structure). The function then returns the structure as an output argument.
By using a persistent variable, you can avoid the use of a global variable, and you only need to load the structure once per MATLAB session. Each time the get_properties function is called after the first time, it simply retrieves the already-loaded structure from the persistent variable.
You can then call the get_properties function in your modeling functions to obtain the thermodynamic properties structure:
function my_model_func(input_args)
properties = get_properties();
In this way, you only load the thermodynamic properties structure once per MATLAB session, and your modeling functions can access it without the need to pass it as an input argument.
Hope this helps!
