An Ontology-based Product Information Modeling Framework For Conceptual Design

Conceptual design is perhaps the most crucial task in an engineering product development cycle. Recently, many researchers are increasing attention for computer-aided conceptual design. But computer-aided conceptual design is difficult to accomplish. Product modeling has been regarded as a key technology to develop conceptual design support systems. Traditional product modeling techniques are mainly focused on physical product modeling and geometric representation, which makes them insufficient to help in the conceptual design progress. Today, the design knowledge and expertise are geographically distributed and heterogenous. Thus, it becomes a critical issue for consistent representation for design knowledge, and the demand for effectively retrieving, reusing, sharing and exchanging design knowledge. In the research field of knowledge representation and knowledge processing, the application of ontologies has proven to be an advantageous paradigm over recent years. Ontologies are well suited for design knowledge representation.In this thesis, a preliminary attempt at using ontologies and semantic web paradigm, especially the Web Ontology Language (OWL), for product information modeling is described. An overview of the ongoing work with ontologies and semantic web are presented. An ontology-based product information modeling framework, i.e. FPS information modeling framework is proposed. Function model, principle model and structure model in the framework are defined. Then OWL is used to describe related ontologies of the framework. A conceptual design prototype system has also been developed to implement and demonstrate the proposed modeling framework by using Protege. Function terminology ontology, flow terminology ontology, principle ontology and component ontology are created. The effectiveness of the developed prototype system has been illustrated with a case of a marine pipe cutter conceptual design.FPS information modeling framework formally represents and organizes product information in functional, principle and physical domain in a multilevel and object-oriented manner. In each domain, the information is organized according to the product decomposition structure. It also can map among the three domains. Product design representation in OWL format provides improved abstraction of the conceptual design, enhanced opportunity for integration and updating of design changes, consequently promising a more collaborative and cooperative design environment.