Qualitative Modelling of Manufacturing Machinery

The research in this paper deals with the simulation of continuous machine systems that can be described in a discrete manner (discrete-event systems), using qualitative simulation techniques. In order to represent discrete-time descriptions of machine systems and processes in an efficient way, this approach uses a combination of both qualitative modelling techniques and numerical methods. An object-oriented qualitative modelling and simulation toolbox, called QMTOOL, was extended and applied into modelling specific machine processes. Experiments carried out using this qualitative modelling and simulation toolbox, provided performance metrics and assisted the design and real-time control of specific industrial machines and processes. The results obtained have shown that qualitative modelling can provide less complex computational models for describing and simulating discrete-event machine systems, and that these models could be applied in cases where traditional mathematical models are difficult to manage