AN ONTOLOGY FOR ENGINEERING ANALYSES

Computational analysis has become an essential tool for the evaluation of designs for complex engineering products, and engineers are using more analysis applications to model a wider range of product behaviour than ever before. Existing technology is unable to offer effective so lutions for the management and integration of either the applications themselves or the information they use and create. This is in part due to an inadequate understanding of the engineering analysis process. I n order to facilitate the construction of more automated analysis syst ems with reduced dependence on specialized data formats, it is necessa ry to better understand how existing analysis applications use and gen erate information and what their common (and hence potentially shareab le) elements are. We present a discussion of the concepts of computati onal analysis and its use within the engineering design process. The d esign of gas turbine rotor blades is used to illustrate the wide range of analyses that need to be supported within mechanical engineering, and analyses for the calculation of stress and strain values for these blades are used to exemplify the roles of the primary concepts involv ed.