INTERACTION CONTROL IN A COMBINED LOGISTICS AND CHEMICAL PROCESS SIMULATION

摘要

This paper describes a synchronisation component of a framework intended at a rapid and transparent integration of (sub)models of logistics components (usually discrete event based) and of chemical processes (continuous) into an overall simulation model of an industrial system. Such kind of model enables an analysis of those behavioral features of the complete system which result from the interplay of its components and are not directly observable under their separate investigation. Domain-specific properties of subsystem interaction allow to implement a flexible, powerful yet simple synchronisation scheme. It operates with standard communication interfaces and does not rely upon arranging a complex specialised platform for distributed simulation. A detailed description of the synchronisation algorithm is given, and some causality related issues are discussed. The prototype framework works with models implemented in eM-Plant (for logistics) and WinZPR (for chemical processes).