In this paper, we introduce a system to collect product information from manufacturers and make it available in tools that are used for concurrent design of spacecraft. The planning of a spacecraft needs experts from different disciplines, like propulsion, power, and thermal. Since these different disciplines rely on each other there is a high need for communication between them, which is often realized by a Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) process and corresponding tools. We show by comparison that the product information provided by manufacturers often does not match the information needed by MBSE tools on a syntactic or semantic level. The information from manufacturers is also currently not available in machine-readable formats. Afterwards, we present a prototype of a system that makes product information from manufacturers directly available in MBSE tools, in a machine-readable way.
The specification of information exchange between manufacturers and MBSE tools does not only include technical protocols but also the information on which data is relevant in which context and what is its semantic meaning. Tailored modeling languages and tools are required to describe the semantic model of a spacecraft. looked into existing languages and tools that can be used to describe Conceptual Data Models (CDMs). They conclude that none of them are ideal for this task @cite_28 . In the same year, Ait- introduced a special ontology modeling language (PLIB) for engineering in general @cite_9 . Following their former analysis, developed a conceptual data modeling language, SCDML @cite_1 , and also an ontology to describe space system design data @cite_15 . also mentioned the benefits of ontologies and Web Ontology Language (OWL) together with the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) for the MBSE process @cite_14 @cite_19 @cite_26 . On top of that, they built the Semantic Engineering Modeling Framework (SEMF) @cite_7 . MARVL CIP @cite_13 is a platform that aims to support the information exchange between agencies and manufacturers across the whole life cycle of the spacecraft.
@cite_14 @cite_26 @cite_7 @cite_28 @cite_9 @cite_1 @cite_19 @cite_15 @cite_13
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Model-based Systems Engineering requires an intuitive semantically strong data model to enable precise data specification and provide the foundation for fruitful data analyses during data evolution. This paper presents an approach to use the Web Ontology Language (OWL) for specifying a Conceptual Data Model (CDM) being transformed into a format understandable by the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) to profit from powerful data handling and knowledge management functions during runtime. Coalescing OWL with EMF brings up the strength of both approaches leading to considerably better data models with less failure potential and reveal notably more analysis potential by using a common data model specification. This approach also enables the direct application of reasoning functionality for automatic inference of several pieces of knowledge and automatic checks as illustrated by examples from aerospace industry. Engineering phase specific tailored views on data are required to prevent over-engineering and to discover missing elements. This paper presents an approach to enhance a semantic Conceptual Data Model (CDM) to define the specific behavior of engineering phases. Therefore, a CDM gets enhanced by an ontology profile to specify required and non-admissible features for each engineering phase. This is exploited to enhance exis­ting transformations from Web Ontology Language (OWL) to Eclipse Modeling Language (EMF) to generate phase specific decorators representing the corresponding views on data items. The approach also supports engineering phase specific handling of constraints and rules that further augment the guidance of engineers through the system development process by applying knowledge management functions such as reasoning. As a result, the presented approach reveals a notably higher data quality and offers more analysis potential by enabling phase-specific definitions of views on data and specification of semantic checks on CDM level. Several use cases from aerospace engineering have been analyzed and the improvements in areas such as inconsistency detection, knowledge derivation, and guided system modeling are highlighted in this paper. Technologies for Industry-4.0 are evolving rapidly, and the term semantics is widely used. Various standardization groups claim that they provide mechanisms to express semantics or allow the integration of semantic information. The emerging data format AutomationML (as IEC 62714) proposes a role-based approach to encode semantics in engineering models and has already standardized fundamental engineering concepts as role classes. However, for concrete data processing tasks the currently standardized role classes are not sufficient to unambiguously express the meaning of various vendor or application specific concepts, while user-defined role classes rely on hand wired semantics encoded in dedicated software, e.g. importer exporters. Yet AutomationML system unit classes represent reusable engineering objects as relational models of AutomationML roles, attributes, interfaces, internal elements and links, which can be used to describe complex user-specific concepts. To enable an automatic machine interpretation of these unstandardized relational models, we transform AutomationML data to a formal and declarative semantic representation using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), and propose a rule mining approach to learn the intended meaning of user selected system unit classes, i.e. to identify the common relational structure shared by the selected engineering objects. Modeling engineering knowledge explicitly and representing it by means of standardized modeling languages and in machine-understandable form enables advanced engineering processes in industrial and factory automation. This affects positively both process and product quality. In this paper we explore how the AutomationML format, an emerging data exchange standard, that supports the Industry 4.0 vision, can be represented by means of two established modeling approaches - Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) and Semantic Web. We report observed differences w.r.t. resulting model features and model creation process and, additionally, present the application possibilities of the developed models for engineering process improvement in a production system engineering context.