An Ontology for Representing Knowledge of Decision Interactions in Decision-Based Design

Design processes for complex engineered systems are inherently complex due to the dependencies among subsystems at the same level and between levels of a partitioned hierarchy. In decision-based design, this results in interactions among sets of design decisions. Representing and capturing the knowledge related to the decision interactions is critical for designing decision-based design processes. Two key challenges in modeling the interactions are: • there are different types of decisions, and • these decisions are made at different levels. To address these challenges, in this paper we identify nine basic interaction patterns among decisions and propose an ontology to define the knowledge associated with these interaction patterns. Key advantages of the ontology include that we can capture both the vertical and horizontal interactions between decisions in a decision-based design process, and we can design flexible, reusable, and executable decision workflows for designing complex systems using the ontology. The utility of the ontology is illustrated via a one[HYPHEN]stage reduction gearbox design example, a hot rod rolling process design example and a composite structure design example.