Model-checking based on Fluid Petri Nets for the temperature control system of the ICARO co-generative plant

The modeling and analysis of hybrid systems is a recent and challenging research area which is actually dominated by two main lines: a functional analysis based on the description of the system in terms of discrete state (hybrid) automata (whose goal is to ascertain for conformity and reachability properties), and a stochastic analysis (whose aim is to provide performance and dependability measures). This paper investigates a unifying view between formal methods and stochastic methods by proposing an analysis methodology of hybrid systems based on Fluid Petri Nets (FPN). It is shown that the same FPN model can be fed to a functional analyser for model checking as well as to a stochastic analyser for performance evaluation. We illustrate our approach and show its usefulness by applying it to a "real world" hybrid system: the temperature control system of a co-generative plant