Heterogeneous decomposition and inter-level coupling for combined modeling

A system of boiling water is used to demonstrate how to create an FSA (finite state automaton)-controlled multimodel which efficiently represents a system using heterogeneous models. The models represent a combined simulation in that there is an automaton level and a functional block level. A combined continuous/discrete-event model divided up the total boiling water process into distinct phases. Coordination of models for these phases was facilitated by the phase graph associated with the FSA. In addition, the formal system-theoretic relationships between the FSA and block model definitions were demonstrated. It was found that by geometrically partitioning phase space one could form an FSA with equivalent behavior to the collection of individual differential equation based systems representing the low-level state changes