FLUID STOCHASTIC PETRI NETS - THEORY, APPLICATIONS, AND SOLUTION TECHNIQUES

In this paper we introduce a new class of stochastic Petri nets in whi ch one or more places can hold fluid rather than discrete tokens. We d efine a class of fluid stochastic Petri nets in such a way that the di screte and continuous portions may affect each other. Following this d efinition we provide equations for their transient and steady-state be havior. We present several examples showing the utility of the constru ct in communication network modeling and reliability analysis, and dis cuss important special cases, We then discuss numerical methods for co mputing the transient behavior of such nets. Finally, some numerical e xamples are presented and evidence of the accuracy of the fluid approx imation is given. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.