Temporal information in qualitative simulation

Qualitative simulation is a valuable method for predicting the behavior of partially known dynamical systems. This paper presents an order of magnitude reasoning method which combines purely qualitative simulation technique with some partial numerical information in order to capture temporal information. Duration evaluation methods used so far are based on the mean value theorem. However, for critical points, this method is no longer suitable and a method based on the second order Taylor formula is proposed and presented with a validating example