A composable simulation environment to support the design of mechatronic systems

Multi-disciplinary simulation is an important tool in the design of mechatronic systems. The demand for less expensive products that can be introduced quickly to respond to market demands requires that these products be designed with minimal prototyping, relying on simulation instead to verify design requirements. Multi-disciplinary and evolutionary simulation models are based on our port-based modeling paradigm. In our modeling paradigm, systems are described from a systems engineering point of view where subsystems interact with their environment through energy exchange. We describe systems as self-contained entities, whose interactions with the environment are independent of the internal behavior of the system. The port-based modeling paradigm is based on two concepts: ports and connections. Ports represent localized points on the boundary of the system where energy exchange between the system and the environment takes place. A connection between two ports represents the energy exchange between two subsystems.; Based on our port-based modeling paradigm, we build system simulations through composition of individual modeling entities; we call this approach composable simulation. By composable simulation we mean the ability to generate system-level simulations automatically by simply organizing the system components in a CAD system. When these system components are combined into a complete system, our framework automatically combines a selection of the associated component models into a system-level simulation.; To support the evolutionary aspect of the design process, we introduce a new modeling paradigm called reconfigurable models. A reconfigurable model is based on two principles: composition and instantiation. The composition principle denotes the mechanism by which the formal behavior of the component is described in terms of interfaces of subcomponents and their interactions. The second principle—the principle of instantiation—describes the mechanism by which the interface of a model is bound to its implementation; A reconfigurable model represents the modeling space of a system component. concrete (fully determined), thereby supporting the evolutionary nature of the design process. They allow the designer to work with high-level concepts that can be specialized at later stages in the design process. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...