  The theory of Petri Nets provides a general framework to specify the
behaviors of real-time reactive systems and Time Petri Nets were introduced to
take also temporal specifications into account. We present in this paper a
forward zone-based algorithm to compute the state space of a bounded Time Petri
Net: the method is different and more efficient than the classical State Class
Graph. We prove the algorithm to be exact with respect to the reachability
problem. Furthermore, we propose a translation of the computed state space into
a Timed Automaton, proved to be timed bisimilar to the original Time Petri Net.
As the method produce a single Timed Automaton, syntactical clocks reduction
methods (Daws and Yovine for instance) may be applied to produce an automaton
with fewer clocks. Then, our method allows to model-check TTPN by the use of
efficient Timed Automata tools.
  To appear in Theory and Practice of Logic Programming (TPLP).
