Colored Petri Net Modules of Complex Selecting Criteria

Colored Petri nets (CPNs) have been widely used as a mathematical modeling tool of dynamical systems , both for control and simulation. CPNs are very appealing and appear uncomplicated because of their simple graphical representation. However, as the CPN definition is very concise, specific processes have to be modeled with appropriate modules that sometimes are not easy to conceive. To broaden the use of CPNs in discrete event simulation, the authors present two CPN modules that model complex selecting criteria. The first module selects a constant number of entities from a set of places. The second module selects a variable number of entities from a set of places. The modules simulate the execution of the criteria, avoiding the use of superfluous components. These CPN modules were developed for automatic top-down refinement of CPN models but can also be used as templates for manual refinement of CPNs.