Heterogeneous simulation and interoperability of tools applied to the design, integration and development of safety critical systems

A key issue of the assessment of the Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is the integration between the requirement, functional and physical analyses. It turns out into a full capability of correlation and data exchange among the tools currently available to manage those three activities and, in particular, into a tight cooperation between the functional modeling and the physical one, being based on several methods of engineering, widely applied since longtime (mathematical, analytical, numerical and experimental). A successful accomplishment of this task within the frame of the development of the MBSE represents a milestone for both the methodology and the tools of the Systems Engineering. The application of models and simulations to support the engineering activities has spread over different domains and is strictly related to the decision making process applied to finalize an effective system design. Many kind of models are often performed to develop the systems currently populating the wide scenario of complex and smart products. When the product is a result of a material processing, some geometrical models allow describing shape and properties of the manufactured product, whose behavior is then predicted by resorting to some numerical discretization funded on a set of equations to be solved. Those models mainly describe the real nature of system, not only as is designed but even as is manufactured, thus allowing the required verification and validation activities. Due to this motivation those models belong the so–called physical modeling, whose key targets are both a mathematical modeling and a quantitative evaluation of performance. According to the MBSE the above described activity is never sufficient to completely define the details of the system under design and development. Moreover, to face the inherent complexity of new systems, being characterized by a number of functions, components and interfaces, a clear traceability from requirement to numbered part is needed. A bright allocation of each requirement to the system functions first, and to its logical blocks then, is definitely a key issue of the proposed approach. Those two main goals require a preliminary functional modeling activity, never characterized by numbers, while is dominant a prediction of system operation, behavior, interaction with other systems and stakeholders, and even a preliminary definition of well assessed requirements to motivate a consequent set of proposed layouts, based on some selected technology