Functional decomposition for interpretation of model based simulation

Abstract

Description of system function is already in use as the basis of an approach to interpretation of the results of simulation in design analysis, allowing an automated design analysis tool to generate a textual report detailing the results of the simulation in terms of its purpose. This paper presents a novel functional description language that allows cases where the individual elements of a required system function themselves constitute (subsidiary) functions from cases where this is not so. This increases the expressive power of the functional description, allowing the automatic generation of design analysis reports of greater precision than has previously been possible and increases the range of systems and design analysis tasks for which the approach can be used. 1