Towards an FMI Layered Standard for DAE: Applications for Simulation and Optimization
The Functional Mock-up Interface (FMI) 3.0 standard for Model Exchange is restricted to hybrid ordinary differential equations, requiring any internal algebraic equations to be solved inside the Functional Mock-up Unit (FMU) before derivatives are returned to the importer. For models originating from, e.g. Modelica, this means that non-linear algebraic equations must be solved through internal Newton iterations, which can reduce accuracy, increase computational cost, introduce hidden solver states, and cause robustness issues in downstream simulation and optimization workflows. In this article, we present a proposal for a layered standard, fmi-ls-dae, that exposes algebraic equations and their associated algebraic variables as part of a semi-explicit index-1 differential-algebraic equation. We describe the proposed extensions to the FMI XML schema and demonstrate the approach through prototype implementations: Dymola and CasADi generate FMUs that expose this semi-explicit index-1 formulation, while CasADi, FMIOPT, Simcenter Twin Activate, fmusim, and MOO (the dynamic optimization tool of OpenModelica) import them for simulation and dynamic optimization. On an industrially relevant multilink suspension corner model, the proposed DAE-FMU formulation enables the optimization routine to converge on an optimal control problem on which the equivalent ODE-FMU fails to converge. We outline ongoing work towards consistent initialization, event handling and future support for higher-index DAEs.