Exploring Ontology-Based Approach to Facilitate Integration of Multi-Physics and Visualization for Numerical Models
Authors: Vucinic Dean , Pesut Marina , Jovic Franjo , Lacor Chris 
Published: July 2010

Today, within the engineering design process, we have interactions between different design teams, where each team has its own design objective and continuous need to present and share results with other groups. Common engineering environments are equipped with advanced modeling and simulation tools, specially designed to improve engineer’s productivity. In this paper we propose the use of ontologies, the semantic metadata descriptors, to facilitate the software development process in building such multidisciplinary engineering environments. The important development task is to perform integration of several numerical simulation components (models of data and processes) together with the interactive visualization of the engineering models in a unified 3D scene. In addition, we explore the possibilities on how the prototyped ontologies can become standard components in such software systems, where the presence of the inference engine grants and enables continuous semantic integration of the involved data and processes. The semantic integration is based on: 1) mapping discovery between two or more ontologies, 2) declarative formal representation of mappings to enable 3) reasoning with mappings and find what types of reasoning are involved; and we have explored these three dimensions. The proposed solution involves two web based software standards: Semantic Web and X3D. The developed prototype make use of the “latest” available XML-based software technologies, such X3D (eXtensible 3D) and OWL (Web Ontology Language), and demonstrates the modeling approach to integrate heterogeneous data sources, their interoperability and 3D visual representations to enhance the end-users interactions with the engineering content. We demonstrate that our ontology-based approach is appropriate for the reuse, share and exchange of software constructs, which implements differential-geometric algorithms used in multidisciplinary numerical simulations, by applying adopted ontologies that are used in the knowledge-based systems. The selected engineering test case represents a complex multi-physics problem FSI (Fluid Structure Interaction). It involves numerical simulations of a multi-component box structure used for the drop test in a still water. The numerical simulations of the drop test are performed through combined used of the FEM (Finite Element Method) and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) solvers. The important aspect is the design of a common graphics X3D model, which combines the FEM data model, which is coupled with the CFD data model in order to preserve all the relationships between CFD and FEM data. Our ultimate vision is to build intelligent and powerful mechanical engineering software by developing infrastructure that may enable efficient data sharing and process integration mechanisms. We see our current work in exploring the ontology-based approach as a first step towards semantic interoperability of numerical simulations and visualization components for designing complex multi-physics solutions.