| dc.description.abstract | Industrial systems are becoming complex and large-scale. Optimization of their operation
and testing of their control systems are done on simulation models frequently, because
simulated experiments are faster, cheaper, and repeatable compared to experiments done
on real industrial plants. However, design and re-design of simulation models are difficult
and time-consuming tasks. In addition, integration of simulation models within industrial
automation systems is not satisfactory nowadays. This thesis is aimed at improving the
design and integration phases of the simulation model life-cycle.
In the area of the simulation model design, especially a component-based approach for
simulation model creation is investigated and improved in this thesis. It assumes that engineering
systems consist of atomic components that are connected into topologies of real
industrial plants. The proposed method supports assembling simulation models from simulation
components, which can be reused from previous simulation projects. Each real device
can be simulated by one of the available implementations of the component, representing
this device. The proposed solution is based on the utilization of the bond-graph theory
to guarantee the compatibility of the interfaces of the connected component implementations
and to support their selection. In addition, the bond-graph theory is used to support
splitting a simulation model into a set of simulation modules and their integration into a
simulation workflow. For all of these types of tasks, the bond-graph theory was enhanced
with an explicit description of component interfaces and a new causality assignment algorithm
was designed. This algorithm can be used not only for generation of simulation
models, but also for verifications on a conceptual planning level, whether specific sets of
simulation component implementations are sufficient to model particular plants.
In the area of the simulation model integration, two research threads are followed. The
first one is related to formalizing, capturing, and integrating knowledge about the real industrial
plant, input and output tags, parameters of devices, and mappings of all these entities
to simulation model components, variables, and parameters. Such engineering knowledge
is used to support simulation model design and maintenance of existing simulation models
when a real plant is changed. The second thread in the integration area is focused on
interoperability of simulation modules on the level of the supervisory control and data acquisition
of the automation pyramid. This task covers the access of simulations to runtime
data, improved parameter setting, and version-control of simulation modules.
This thesis contributes to the areas of the simulation modeling, knowledge representation,
and distributed system integration. The most important results are (i) adaptation
of the bond graph theory for non-traditional applications including selection of explicitly
specified component implementations as well as a new causality assignment algorithm supporting
this approach, (ii) utilization of ontologies for supporting simulation model design
and integration, and (iii) improved simulation model integration.
ii | cze |
