Date of Award

12-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Engineering (ME)

Department

Mechanical Engineering

Committee Chair/Advisor

Gregory Mocko

Committee Member

Gang Li

Committee Member

Bing Li

Abstract

The development of the US Army’s next-generation of ground vehicle systems is supported by simulations that predict vehicle performance and inform engineering design choices in the design and acquisition process. In this paper, we describe the development of an Integrated Ontology Suite to support modeling and simulation of next generation military ground vehicles. The ontology suite is intended to address model reuse challenges and increase the shared understanding of ground vehicle system simulations. It is intended to function in a Model Library structure that stores, documents, assembles, and executes vehicle simulations. The ontology suite consists of four domain ontologies: Vehicle operations (VehOps), Operational environment (Env), Ground vehicle architecture (VehArch), and Simulation model ontology (SimMod) and one integration ontology. The separate domain ontologies allow for extensibility, while the integration ontology establishes semantic relationships across the domain ontologies. The ontology suite, developed using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), leverages existing ground vehicle modeling and simulation knowledge (SAE J2998 and SAE J3049) and extends the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and Common Core Ontologies (CCO) to ensure semantic compatibility. Based on our experience, we provide recommendations for ontology development and demonstrate the use of the ontology suite to support ground vehicle development. Examples from the Deep Orange development project and existing Simulink vehicle dynamics simulation are used demonstrate the functionality of the ontology suite for modeling the key performance requirements, representing testing procedures to verify the vehicle performance, specifying the vehicle architecture including major systems and subsystems, and capturing model components and simulations. Finally, we discuss how the ontology is used to realize a library of simulation models and identify approaches to support the reuse of simulation models within the vehicle development process.

Share

COinS
 
 

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately,
you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.