Semantically enabled process synthesis and optimisation

This paper introduces a new framework to support synthesis of complex engineering problems and which combines stochastic serach optimisation with ontological knowledge modelling. The framework uses Tabu search to generate new solutions and introduces the mechanism of digital certificate to translate between structural information of solutions and semantics of ontology. The solutions are respectively clustered by design features. Tested against complex synthesis of reactor networks, the framework demonstrates noticeable advantage in convergence and superiority in simplifying solutions with favourable comparisons drawn against conventional stochastic optimisation algorithms.