Modeling physical systems using finite element Cell-DEVS

We propose a method to analyze complex physical systems using two-dimensional Cell-DEVS models. These problems are usually modeled with one or more Partial Differential Equations and solved using numerical methods. Our goal is to improve the definition of such problems by mapping them into the Cell-DEVS formalism, which permits easy integration with models defined with other formalisms, and its definition using advanced modeling and simulation tools. To show this, we used two methods for solving PDEs, and deduced the updating rules for their mapping to Cell-DEVS. As our simulation results show, the accuracy of the Cell-DEVS solution is the same of these previous methods, showing that we can use Cell-DEVS as a tool to obtain numerical solution for systems of PDEs. Simultaneously, this method provides us with a simpler mechanism for model definition, automated parallelism, and faster execution. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.