From IEC 61131-3 Function Block Diagrams to Sequentially Constructive Statecharts
Marcel Christian Werner, Klaus Schneider · 2022
Function Block Diagrams (FBDs) are widely used for implementing the software of IEC 61131-3 based systems. In general, there is a risk that FBDs used in industry will become more and more complex during their life cycle, while at the same time strict specifications have to be met. On the other hand, a trend towards model-based design with standardized modeling tools can be observed in software engineering. While previous research focuses on translating existing FBDs to formal models for verification purposes, this paper presents two translations from existing FBDs to sequentially constructive statecharts, thus enabling an intuitive functional reuse for a model-based design. Besides a basic translation in the first approach, it is shown in the second approach that it is possible to improve the readability through code refactoring within the synchronous paradigm.