INTERVAL ARITHMETIC APPROACH TO QUALITATIVE PHYSICS - STATIC SYSTEMS

Qualitative physics gives good behavioral description for systems with extremely ambiguous information. However, in engineering applications less ambiguous information is generally available which can be represented easily in terms of interval numbers. In this work, the interval arithmetic reasoner (IAR) is proposed to deal with the interval types of confluences. A resolving technique is discussed to find a less ambiguous solution for interval model equations. If the intervals describing physical quantities approach infinity, then the current method approaches to the ENVISION system. On the other hand, if each physical quantity is a crisp number, then the IAR becomes conventional quantitative simulation. A chemical reactor is used to illustrate the proposed method.