Combining Discrete Event Models and Modelica – General Thoughts and a Special Modeling Environment

This contribution consists of two parts. In the first part general possibilities for the combination of Modelica models and discrete event models are discussed on a conceptual level. It is shown that it is necessary to support asynchronous behavior and that it is useful to represent sampled data behavior of discrete event systems in an interrupt-driven style for fast simulation. The characterizations of the alternatives are summarized in table 1. In the second part a modeling environment prototype that provides dedicated editors for different discrete event formalisms and supports hierarchical and heterogeneous models is presented briefly. It transforms a discrete event model into a Modelica class whose behavior is given by a Modelica algorithm and several Modelica functions. Such a discrete event component can be inserted intuitively into a model of a physical system and simulated by standard Modelica-Tools.