Virtual Commissioning by Means of an Adaptive Selection of the Modeling Depth

In many areas of modern engineering, especially in the field of plant engineering, models have become indispensable. Models are not only used for construction, but also to simulate the system behavior e.g. for the control design or during virtual commissioning (VC). In all applications, it has to be decided how detailed the created models should be. For this, a methodology for selecting the modeling depth can be used, which is based on four different modeling depths. However, if requirements change during the operation of the system, it may be necessary to change the modeling depth during simulation run time. The main purpose of this article is to present an approach which allows the modeling depth to be adjusted in terms of changing conditions during simulation runtime. This approach is illustrated by an example of a material flow system.