Port-Based Ontology for Scheme Generation of Mechanical System

The port has been considered as the basis of scheme configuration that it plays an important role for product conceptual design. Also port-based ontology (PBO) has been paid attention to represent for functional modeling of mechanical system. The port constitutes the interface of a component and defines its boundary in a system configuration. However, the ontology is a formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualization, which can guide conceptual generation of artifacts from the functional point view. The combination port with ontology can conveniently capture the definition of component and corresponding design knowledge, it is easy to syntheize design scheme. This paper proposes an approach to PBO for scheme generation of mechanical system. A port-based knowledge building process is described for functional modeling. However, previous knowledge acquisition approaches are based on decomposition techniques for functional modeling. This paper gives a method for creating and managing different ports. Our knowledge framework has a systematic structure with three port types and three knowledge layers. The three port types are mechanical ports, electrical ports and configuration ports, and the three knowledge layers are specialized functional knowledge, behavioral knowledge and structural knowledge for different domains. The three knowledge layers represent different abstraction levels of the product knowledge conceptualization. Each layer includes several knowledge types for accommodating comprehensive knowledge and is represented with first order logic (FOL). We provide formal definitions of the framework to manage comprehensive knowledge according to the proposed knowledge framework. Finally, a fast clasping mechanism case is given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the research.