Conceptual Design Knowledge Management and the Semantic Web

The early stages of engineering design are critical, as the decisions made at this point have the most impact on the final product. However, little software is available to support engineers during the initial, conceptual design phase. In addition, at this and all other stages of design, engineers are increasingly tasked with utilizing unwieldy collections of data such as databases of legacy designs and catalogs. This work addresses both of these issues. A conceptual design interface with several advancements crucial to industrial deployment is developed and used to aid design. Among these are provisions for real-time collaboration and security. A representation of mechanical devices based on intended function is developed and used by the conceptual design interface to capture design semantics. This representation is defined using a description logic, enabling automated reasoning. The descriptions created using the conceptual design interface can thus be employed to annotate designs, create search queries, and to organize collections of designs. Further, this work incorporates Semantic Web technology, enabling conceptual design knowledge to be published and accessed effectively on the World Wide Web. New applications of design repositories are made possible by this but new issues must be investigated and addressed, as discussed here.