A Systems Approach for Modelling Mechatronics Systems

Abstract This paper presents a unified approach based on utilizing multidimensional arrays in order to model the physical and logical properties of mechatronics systems. A mechatronics system model consists of two interacting submodels. A submodel that describes aspects related to energy flow in the physical system, and another submodel that describes aspects related to information flow in the control system. The multidimensional array based approach of modelling provides us with the possibility to use one terminology and the same formalism for modelling both subsystems. The consequence of using the same formalism is that simulation of the mechatronics system can be performed using only one simulation environment.