A Heuristic Method of Using the Pointers to Physical Effects in Su-Field Analysis

While TRIZ is increasingly developing both in research and education, users always encounter difficulties in their attempts to practice it, especially for one of the most complicated inventive problem solving tools, the Su-Field analysis, which is used to analyze and improve the efficiency of a technical system. Generally, the process of using a Su-Field model to solve a specific inventive problem includes: building a Problem Model, mapping it to a Generic Problem Model, finding a Generic Solution Model based on the corresponding inventive standard and finally establishing and interpreting a Solution Model in real life. As one of the most important phases of the Su-Field analysis, the last step is normally implemented manually with the help of the pointers to physical effects, which link generic technical functions to specific applications and systems. The adequate pointer, compatible with the context of the specific problem, should be chosen to assist the users to instantiate the Solution Model. However, the pointers to physical effects and the specific problems are built at different levels of abstraction, so it is difficult for the users to choose among many eligible pointers to physical effects given a certain function. This paper proposes a heuristic method to use the pointers to physical effects based on ontology reasoning. The use of formal models, called ontologies, allows to formally define the concepts about the models and the effects and to apply logical reasoning on them. An inventive standards ontology and a physical effects ontology are firstly built to describe the process of SuField analysis, and then the logical reasoning rules are established according to a lexical dictionary, the analysis of the inventive standards and the physical effects. The lexical dictionary, based on WordNet, is built to improve the selection of the appropriate effect to apply. Finally, ontology reasoning is implemented to provide heuristic physical effects for the users. A case is used to show this heuristic process in detail.