Modeling and Simulation of Physical Systems in a Mechatronic Context

Abstract: This thesis gives different views on the modeling and simulation of physical systems, especially together with embedded systems, forming mechatronic systems. The main considered application domain is automotive. One motivation behind the work is to find suitable representations of physical systems to be used in an architectural description language for automotive embedded systems, EAST-ADL2, which is implemented as a UML2 profile, and uses concepts from both UML and SysML. As a part of the thesis, several languages and tools are investigated, including bond graphs, MATLAB/Simulink, Ptolemy II, Modelica, MATLAB/Simscape and SysML. For SysML, the modeling of continuous-time systems and how it relates to MATLAB/Simulink and Modelica is evaluated. A case study of an electric power assisted steering is modeled to show the differences, the similarities and the usage of the above mentioned languages and tools. To be able to classify the tools and languages, five realization levels were developed:Physical modeling modelsConstraint modelsContinuous causal modelsDiscretized modelsDiscretized models with solver and platform implementationBy using these realization levels, models, tools and modeling languages can be classified, and transformations between them can be set up and analyzed. As a result, a method to describe the simulation behavior of a MATLAB/Simulink model has been developed using SysML activity diagrams as an approach to achieve integrated system models. Another result is an evaluation of the parametric diagrams of SysML for continuous-time modeling, which shows that they do not enable “physical modeling”, i.e. modeling the topology of the system and getting the underlying equations out of this topology. By including physical ports and physical connectors to SysML internal block diagrams, this could be solved. The comparison also shows many similarities between the languages. The results led to a more detailed investigation on conjugate variables, such as force and velocity, and electric current and voltage, and how these are treated in various languages. The thesis also includes two industrial case studies: one of a twin-screw compressor, and one of a simulation environment for automotive fuel-cell systems. Conclusions are drawn from these models, referring to the realization levels.