Generic FMI-compliant Simulation Tool Coupling

Abstract

The Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) specification pro- vides a simple yet effective definition for co-simulation APIs. Even though the number of simulation tools sup- porting the export of Functional Mock-up Units (FMU) is growing steadily, there is a considerable number of well- established tools that do not. This paper addresses this issue by introducing a generic and adaptable way of cou- pling established simulation tools in an FMI-compliant manner. The proposed concept has been implemented as part of the FMI++ library, which is used as basis for FMI- compliant wrappers for the TRNSYS simulation tool and the MATLAB environment. These examples demonstrate the potential of the proposed approach to include well- established simulation tools with minimal effort. This not only enables researchers and engineers to include a diverse range of tools more easily into their work flow, but is also an incentive for tool developers to provide FMI-compliant wrappers.