Structural analysis of Petri nets

This chapter, that can be seen as the continuation of the previous one, presents additional background material on Petri nets. In particular, the main focus is on structural analysis, i.e., algebraic tools that do not require the enumeration of the reachability set of a marked net but are based on the analysis of the state equation, on the incidence matrix, etc. Meaningful structural properties, i.e., properties that are only related to the structure of the net and not to its initial marking, are also defined and analyzed. Subclasses of Petri nets are finally defined and simplified analysis criteria that pertain to these classes are presented.