An Ontology-based Method for Process Modeling in MultiDisciplinary Collaborative Design

Process modeling is an important task for collaborative design of a multi-disciplinary nature. This paper proposes an ontology-based method to model the collaborative design process. The aim is to effectively coordinate, allocate and share design resources. Concepts of task, sub-task, and local ontology in the collaborative design environment are defined. The tasks of achieving optimal resource allocations of design resources are divided into sub-tasks that are stored in the form of local ontology. Genetic algorithm is employed in matchresearching among local ontology and different disciplines. Tasks and their discipline views are described in the ontology-enabled semantics-sharing of design resources in multidisciplinary collaborative design. Process modeling of a missile is used as an example to demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed method and framework.