Ontologies to Capture and Share Knowledge in a Distributed Environment Needed to Support Decision Making in Probabilistic Design

Durability and reliability must be considered in the design of structural components. For this purpose, the failure probability is found using probabilistic analysis. A component in an automotive structure usually has many different designs depending on vehicle models. Even in the same vehicle model, the design of the component changes once in a few years. It is important to build up database so that engineers share knowledge in the design of components. The purpose of this study is to develop ontologies in the probabilistic analysis of structures. The ontologies can be used to capture and share knowledge for design process. They also help engineers make decisions on choosing appropriate software and algorithm for the probabilistic analysis of structures.