HANDLING RESOURCE SHARING PROBLEM USING PROPERTY-PRESERVING PLACE FUSIONS OF PETRI NETS

Abstract

Resource sharing is a very complex task in system design because it may induce undesirable properties such as deadlocks and overflows. This paper proposes a method for handling this task. Resource sharing is formulated as a place fusion on a Petri net specification that satisfies a designated set of properties and includes some duplicated places representing accesses to the resources. If this fusion satisfies some conditions, the obtained net will preserve the original properties after the incorporation of resource sharing. This paper considers two classes of property-preserving place fusions. Each class specifies the Petri net type to be used, the structural relationship among the resource places and possibly some additional conditions for the place fusion to preserve a designated set of properties. As an illustration, these place fusion approaches are applied to solve a resource sharing problem in the design of manufacturing systems.