Semantic Data Model for Multibody System Modelling: Dissertation

Multibody system simulation, as one area of system simulation, represents a considerable improvement in predicting machine dynamic performance compared to previous methods that are often based on analytic equations or empirical testing. With multibody system simulation, it is fast and e_cient to study the e_ects of design variables on the dynamic behaviour of the mechanism compared to the experimental approach. Accordingly, the use of multibody system simulation in the design process can decrease the need for physical prototypes, thus accelerating the overall design process and saving resources. In the product development sense, the interaction between computational tools can be cumbersome. For this reason, multibody system simulation is often omitted in terms of the main stream of product development. Due to the increase of computational resources, the trend is towards extensive usage of simulation, including multibody system simulation, in the product development. The research emphasis in the _eld of multibody system dynamics has been on the areas of improved multibody system formulations, such as recursive methods, representation of exible structures, application of multibody simulation in new areas such as biomechanics, and including multibody simulation into multitechnical and multiphysics simulation. The research on modelling data management and integration approaches concerning tools applied in product design and development has not been in the main stream. The growth of the World Wide Web and the evolution of Web technologies have multiplied the amount of data and information available on the Internet. In this expansion of information, it has become cumbersome to _nd and distil the useful information from the data mass. In order to utilise the information available on the Internet and to sort meaningful information out of the data mass, the WorldWideWeb Consortium began a development project for the next generationWeb, the Semantic Web. In this development e_ort, methods and technologies based on semantic data representation are developed and utilised. These methods and technologies are general enough to be applied to other application areas as well. This work concentrates on the modelling data management of multibody system simulation within a simulation-based product process. The main objectives of this work can be summarised as follows: introduce a procedure for managing multibody system modelling data using semantic data model and ontology-based modelling approach, demonstrate that the semantic data model allows applicationbased reasoning on the model data, and show that ontology-based modelling is able to capture domain knowledge by using semantic data and constraint- and rule-based reasoning. In this work, the semantic data representation approach is used for describing modelling data of a multibody system. This is accomplished by developing a multibody system modelling ontology, i.e. a semantic data model for multibody system model description, and then applying this ontology to model an example multibody system.