A sharable ontology for the formal representation of engineering-design knowledge

This paper discusses the use of a domain-indendent, sharable ontology for the formal representation of engineering design knowledge, called YMIR. The central concept in YMIR is that of a primitive generic system model which represents the basic dependencies between the behaviour and the form of a technical system. We believe that it is important to integrate existing formal approaches in the diierent engineering disciplines as much as possible in modelling design knowledge. To this end, we explain how these primitive generic components can be deened in terms of System Theory. Engineering design, in this context, consists of synthesising complex speciic system models by combining and instantiating more elementary generic system models, which in turn are built from primitive models. Furthermore, we present the structures in YMIR for representing knowledge about this synthesis process in terms of system models. Based on these knowledge structure concepts, a basic inferencing strategy for the synthesis of technical systems is proposed.