Efficient Modular Modeling of Interconnected
Dynamic Systems
Modeling and numerical simulation of dynamic systems represented as
ordinary differential equations is easily done through in-house developed and
commercially available integration routines (e.g. MATLAB). Therefore,
for most common industrial systems, modeling is not a technical challenge
any longer. However, modeling does consume resources. In today's cost
conscious industry, the challenge is how to efficiently build models. This
typically results in building libraries of "re-usable", "modular" components.
One of the issues related to building modular components is that the
resultant dynamic equations of inter-connected systems are dependent on
the architecture of the connections between the modular components. This
implies
that component models need to be able to comprehend the different types of
interactions that they can have when integrated into a system.
We will discuss this issue for a class of nonlinear systems affine in the
input, and illustrate the proposed methodology on a practical problem
of interest in the auto industry.