Physical systemsoften exhibit complexnonlinear behaviors in continuoustime at multiple temporaland spatial scales. Abstractionssimplify behavioralanalysis and help focus on dominantsystembehaviors by definingsets of equivalentbehaviortypescalled modes. Systembehaviorevolvesin continuousmodeswith discrete transitions betweenmodes.Subtle interactions betweenthe continuousbehaviorsanddiscrete transitions needto be capturedby well-definedhybridmodeling and analysis semantics. This paper presents a taxonomyof transition modes,and developsa formal semanticsfor transition conditionsthat lead to efficient and physically consistent simulationalgorithms for physicalsystems.
Pieter J. Mosterman, Feng Zhao, Gautam Biswas