Development of a Vehicle Model Architecture in Modelica

The real power and flexibility that comes from using Modelica for physical modeling stems from the combination of the acausal approach to formulating physical connections combined with sets of standard connector definitions in various engineering domains. These features are important because they help avoid a priori causality assumptions (which promotes reuse of components) and ensure physical compatibility across connections. However, complex systems are generally made up of several complex, multidomain subsystems with numerous connectors. Such systems also benefit from having standardized subsystem interface definitions. This paper will focus on an initial proposal for a vehicle model architecture for vehicle system applications. Ultimately, we hope that feedback on this proposal from other groups doing vehicle modeling will lead to a consensus on the appropriate subsystem interfaces such that we can achieve the same level of flexibility and reusability for vehicle subsystem models that we currently have with component level models.