Qualitative Simulation of Hybrid Systems with an Application to SysML Models.

Hybrid systems are specified in a heterogeneous form, with discrete and continuous parts. Simulating such systems requires precise data and synchronization of continuous changes and discrete transitions. However, in the early design stages, missing information forbids numerical simulation. We present here a symbolic execution model for the qualitative simulation of hybrid systems, which consists in computing only qualities of the behavior. This model is implemented in the Diversity symbolic execution engine to build the qualitative behaviors of the system. We apply this approach to the analysis of SysML models, using an M2M transformation from SysML to a pivot language and an M2T transformation from this language to Diversity.