PREMΛP: Knowledge Driven Design of Materials and Engineering Process

Abstract

In this paper, we present the knowledge engineering aspects of an IT infrastructure for a Platform for Realization of Engineered Materials and Products (PREMKP). PREMKP enables harnessing available knowledge, learning emerging knowledge and continually creating new knowledge. It consists of an ontology-based, knowledge-assisted method and platform to capture, structure, configure and reuse knowledge for designing materials and engineering systems. The PREMKP ontology provides extensible representation of data and knowledge. The semantic mappings of concepts in the ontology are used to draw inferences and provide pro-active guidance while designing manufacturing processes and selecting parameters to meet the product specification that addresses a given engineering problem. We show how the ontological models can help in (a) automating process design starting from a requirements statement to selecting a suitable design process and (b) creating a parameterized instance of the selected 1315 process. In the context of two engineering examples, namely, the simultaneous design of a gear and the steel from which it is to be made, we illustrate the salient features of knowledge driven design.