Steady-state performance evaluation of continuous mono-T-semiflow Petri nets

The number of states in discrete event systems can increase exponentially with respect to the size of the system. A way to face this state explosion problem consists of relaxing the system model, for example by converting it to a continuous one. In the scope of Petri nets, the firing of a transition in a continuous Petri net system is done in a real amount. Hence, the marking (state) of the net system becomes a vector of non-negative real numbers. The main contribution of the paper lies in the computation of throughput bounds for continuous Petri net systems with a single T-semiflow. For that purpose, a branch and bound algorithm is designed. Moreover, it can be relaxed and converted into a linear programming problem. Some conditions, under which the system always reaches the computed bounds, are extracted. The results related to the computation of the bounds can be directly applied to a larger class of nets called mono T-semiflow reducible. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.