Structure Preserving Transformations for Practical Model-based Systems Engineering

Abstract: In this third decade of systems engineering in the twenty-first century, it is important to develop and demonstrate practical methods to exploit machine-readable models in the engineering of systems. Substantial investment has been made in languages and modelling tools for developing models. A key problem is that system architects and engineers work in a multidisciplinary environment in which models are not the product of any one individual. This paper provides preliminary results of a formal approach to specify models and structure preserving transformations between them that support model synchronization. This is an important area of research and practice in software engineering. However, it is limited to synchronization at the code level of systems. This paper leverages previous research of the authors to define a core fractal for interpretation of concepts into model specifications and transformation between models. This fractal is used to extend the concept of synchronization of models to the system level and is demonstrated through a practical engineering example for an advanced driver assistance system.