Modelling asset management of railway overhead line equipment

The overhead line equipment (OLE) is a critical sub-system of the 25kV AC overhead railway electrification system. There is a need to evaluate OLE asset management strategies through a whole life cost analysis that considers degradation processes and maintenance activities of the OLE components so that the investment required to deliver the level of performance desired by railway customers and regulators can be based on evidence from modelling results. A Petri Net model is proposed to simulate the degradation, failure, inspection and maintenance of the main OLE components and to calculate various statistics associated with the cost and reliability of the system over its whole life. The Petri Net considers all the main OLE components in one model and can simulate both fixed interval and risk based maintenance regimes. To allow such processes to be modelled accurately and efficiently, High Level Petri Net features are used. The model developed is the first of its kind, in such detail, for OLE and the applicability of Petri Nets for modelling many processes on a large system, containing numerous components, is shown

Accurate complex systems design: integrating serious games with Petri Nets

Difficulty understanding the large number of interactions involved in complex systems makes their successful engineering a problem. Petri Nets are one graphical modelling technique used to describe and check proposed designs of complex systems thoroughly. While automatic analysis capabilities of Petri Nets are useful, their visual form is less so, particularly for communicating the design they represent. In engineering projects, this can lead to a gap in communications between people with different areas of expertise, negatively impacting achieving accurate designs. In contrast, although capable of representing a variety of real and imaginary objects effectively, behaviour of serious games can only be analysed manually through interactive simulation. This paper examines combining the complementary strengths of Petri Nets and serious games. The novel contribution of this work is a serious game prototype of a complex system design that has been checked thoroughly. Underpinned by Petri Net analysis, the serious game can be used as a high-level interface to communicate and refine the design. Improvement of a complex system design is demonstrated by applying the integration to a proof-of-concept case study

Modellierung und Verifikation von verteilten/parallelen Informationssystemen

Petri nets are used in many fields as modelling technique. The different usage areas and modelling objectives require different classes of Petri nets. Powerful high level Petri nets and especially coloured Petri nets are well suited for describing behavior of distributed information systems in order to verify and analyse them. Extended coloured Petri nets with structured marks are presented in this work. An example is used in order to demonstrate the analysis and verification steps. This example algorithm is modeled with extended coloured Petri nets (HCPN-ST). It is transformed into coloured Petri nets, in order to simulate, analyse and verify the method with existing software tools. The model is simulated and analysed with PENECA Chromos tool, although it cannot verify all properties, but it allows to interoperate with INA tool. The remainder of the analysis and verification is done in the INA tool. The above mentioned steps are extended and integrated into the complete analysis process and the verification methodology. Finally, the need and motivation for the extension of dynamic approaches modelling for the analysis of distributed information system is elaborated to accomplish the goal of the work. We succeed to validate, that the extended formal method is an effective method to model and analyse distributed information systems.Petrinetze werden in vielen Bereichen als Modellierungstechnik verwendet. Die verschiedenen Einsatzgebiete und Modellierungsziele erfordern mittel unterschiedliche Typen von Petrinetzen. Die höheren Petrinetze eignen sich gut zur Formalisierung des Verhaltens verteilter Informationssysteme zum Zweck der Verifikation und Analyse. Eine Klasse erweiterter gefärbte Petrinetze (HCPN-ST) mit strukturierten Marken wird in dieser Arbeit vorgestellt und am Beispiel erläutert. An diesem konkreten Modell wird die Analyse und Verifikation demonstriert. Das Beispiel-Algorithmenmodell wird in ein CPN transformiert. Der Algorithmus der Transformation wird vorgestellt. Diese Transformation wird durchgeführt, um die erweiterte Methode mit Software -Tools zu analysieren und verifizieren. Mit Peneca Chromos wird das Modell editiert und simuliert und einige Eigenschaften werden analysiert. Die weitere Analyse und Verifikation erfolgt mit dem Tool INA. Es folgt die Erweiterung und Integration in den gesamten Analyseprozess und die Verifikationsmethodik. Abschließend wird die Notwendigkeit und Motivation zur Erweiterung von dynamischen Modellierungsansätzen für die Analyse von verteilten Informationssystemen behandelt und damit die Zielstellung der Arbeit erreicht

Integration of an object formalism within a hybrid dynamic simulation environment

PrODHyS is a general object-oriented environment which provides common and reusable components designed for the development and the management of dynamic simulation of systems engineering. Its major characteristic is its ability to simulate processes described by a hybrid model. In this framework, this paper focuses on the "Object Differential Petri Net" (ODPN) formalism integrated within PrODHyS. The use of this formalism is illustrated through a didactic example relating to the field of Chemical Process System Engineering (PSE)

Petri nets for systems and synthetic biology

We give a description of a Petri net-based framework for modelling and analysing biochemical pathways, which uni¯es the qualita- tive, stochastic and continuous paradigms. Each perspective adds its con- tribution to the understanding of the system, thus the three approaches do not compete, but complement each other. We illustrate our approach by applying it to an extended model of the three stage cascade, which forms the core of the ERK signal transduction pathway. Consequently our focus is on transient behaviour analysis. We demonstrate how quali- tative descriptions are abstractions over stochastic or continuous descrip- tions, and show that the stochastic and continuous models approximate each other. Although our framework is based on Petri nets, it can be applied more widely to other formalisms which are used to model and analyse biochemical networks

Integration of a failure monitoring within a hybrid dynamic simulation environment

The complexity and the size of the industrial chemical processes induce the monitoring of a growing number of process variables. Their knowledge is generally based on the measurements of system variables and on the physico-chemical models of the process. Nevertheless this information is imprecise because of process and measurement noise. So the research ways aim at developing new and more powerful techniques for the detection of process fault. In this work, we present a method for the fault detection based on the comparison between the real system and the reference model evolution generated by the extended Kalman filter. The reference model is simulated by the dynamic hybrid simulator, PrODHyS. It is a general object-oriented environment which provides common and reusable components designed for the development and the management of dynamic simulation of industrial systems. The use of this method is illustrated through a didactic example relating to the field of Chemical Process System Engineering

Semantic Embedding of Petri Nets into Event-B

We present an embedding of Petri nets into B abstract systems. The embedding is achieved by translating both the static structure (modelling aspect) and the evolution semantics of Petri nets. The static structure of a Petri-net is captured within a B abstract system through a graph structure. This abstract system is then included in another abstract system which captures the evolution semantics of Petri-nets. The evolution semantics results in some B events depending on the chosen policies: basic nets or high level Petri nets. The current embedding enables one to use conjointly Petri nets and Event-B in the same system development, but at different steps and for various analysis.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure

Analysis of signalling pathways using the prism model checker

We describe a new modelling and analysis approach for signal transduction networks in the presence of incomplete data. We illustrate the approach with an example, the RKIP inhibited ERK pathway [1]. Our models are based on high level descriptions of continuous time Markov chains: reactions are modelled as synchronous processes and concentrations are modelled by discrete, abstract quantities. The main advantage of our approach is that using a (continuous time) stochastic logic and the PRISM model checker, we can perform quantitative analysis of queries such as if a concentration reaches a certain level, will it remain at that level thereafter? We also perform standard simulations and compare our results with a traditional ordinary differential equation model. An interesting result is that for the example pathway, only a small number of discrete data values is required to render the simulations practically indistinguishable

Dynamic state reconciliation and model-based fault detection for chemical processes

In this paper, we present a method for the fault detection based on the residual generation. The main idea is to reconstruct the outputs of the system from the measurements using the extended Kalman filter. The estimations are compared to the values of the reference model and so, deviations are interpreted as possible faults. The reference model is simulated by the dynamic hybrid simulator, PrODHyS. The use of this method is illustrated through an application in the field of chemical processe