System Dynamic Models and Real-time Simulation of Complex Material Flow Systems

In this paper a multi-scale simulation approach based on system dynamics is investigated that is divided into a microscopic and a macroscopic model scale. On the microscopic model scale small amounts of parts are simulated, whereby the motion of each single discrete element is explicitly realized by means of a physically-based simulation. On the macroscopic model scale, based on a two-dimensional hyperbolic partial differential equation (PDE), a simulation of the material flow with a large amount of parts is realized. We explicitly examine the requirements on the virtual commissioning, which are a strongly time-deterministic computation in the range of one millisecond, robust and efficient computing algorithms and system-dynamic features. Both simulation models are validated against a real conveyor belt.