Transforming engineering problems through graph representations

The paper introduces a general approach for solving engineering problems by transforming them to problems in other engineering fields, through general discrete mathematical models called graph representations. The idea of the method is first to raise the problem to an abstract mathematical level of graph representations. At that abstract level, either the solution is found through the tools of graph theory, such as the graph duality principle, or the problem is transformed further to another engineering domain, where the problem is associated with a known solution. The paper demonstrates a number of applications of the approach, among them: deriving new concepts in engineering; establishing new engineering designs; analyzing complicated engineering systems, and a generic treatment of both analysis and design. The paper draws the correlation of the suggested approach to known AI topics: representation change and classification problem solving method.