Generation of Simulation Models in MATLAB-Simulink Based on AutomationML Plant Description

Abstract

Process simulations are useful test-beds for experiments and optimizations along the entire industrial plant life-cycle. Shifting testing and tuning of industrial plants and their automation systems from the real world to simulated environments is a part of a virtualization, which is one of the key movements in emerging areas of Industry 4.0 and factories of the future. Although simulations bring a large variety of benefits, they suffer from a time-consuming and error-prone design phase, which limits their use in industrial practice. This paper proposes a new design method called AML2SIM, which transforms the real plant description represented in AutomationML (AML) and generates a dynamic simulation model (SIM). The proposed method signifcantly improves the engineering and re-design of simulation models in terms of saving time and effort of experts as the models can be easily re-generated based on a given AutomationML plant model. Simulations are assembled from simulation blocks that are shared among various projects in simulation libraries, hence the method contributes to reuse of simulation artifacts.