A natural approach to modeling physical systems

Models are useful for design of control systems and they are also an integral part of high performance controllers. Although modeling is an important aspect of most engineering activities, the control engineer faces special problems because he has to deal with strongly heterogeneous systems which have mechanical, electrical, and chemical parts. This paper describes a general approach that can be applied to a wide range of systems. It is based on constraints and object orientation and leads naturally to behavioral systems. The approach is in this paper illustrated with modeling of a thermal boiler