Integration of heterogeneous functional-vs-physical simulation within the industrial system design activity

The `Systems Engineering´ (SE) approach is currently changing the design and development of industrial product being manufactured through a direct processing of materials. Its influence upon the machine and system design activity is herein analyzed, by focusing on the integration of functional and physical models. Assessing a suitable tool to predict the system performance through a heterogeneous simulation is a main goal of the research activity. As an example of application a flywheel system for the kinetic energy storage is used to describe some typical features of this technical domain.