Structured Physically-Based Modeling

This chapter describes structured physically based modeling. The ideas of the abstraction-representation-implementation (ARI) structure and progression are combined with a paradigm of mathematical modeling to yield a canonical structure for physically based models. This structure is suited to a modular, hierarchical approach to the design of models, an approach that is familiar from structured programming. The emphasis is on the design or specification of physically based models, as opposed to their implementation. The approach is to develop and discuss a model on a blackboard, that is, create a blackboard model before implementing it in a computer program. A physically based model includes physical characteristics of the thing being modeled and specifies its behavior via mathematical equations. Thus, a large component of physically based modeling is mathematical modeling. A physically-based model can be divided into three distinct parts: the conceptual model, the mathematical model, and the posed problems. This partition is called the conceptual-mathematical-posed-problem structure, or CMP structure.