An Objective Driven Framework for Discrete Event Simulation of Continuous Systems

This paper introduces an objective-driven framework for discrete-event simulation of continuous systems. In industrial practice, a simulation is developped to verify and validate a given set of system requirements. As a matter of fact a test plan associated to those requirements is also elaborated. Nevertheless, test plans are not taken in consideration during the model design. We use the concept of experimental frame to design an operational formulation of the simulation intended purpose. Our models are based on the concept of quantization to describe traditional kinds of differential equation models into Discrete-Event Systems (DEVS). We provide the specification of a generic DEVS atomic model to represent a first-order Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) usually called a quantized integrator. We illustrate our approach on the simulation of an adaptive cruise controller which uses a proportional-integral feedback control.