Abstract

In both applied ontology and engineering, functionality is a well-researched topic, since it is through teleological causal reasoning that domain experts build mental models of engineering systems, giving birth to functions. These mental models are important throughout the whole lifecycle of any product, being used from the design phase up to diagnosis activities. Though a vast amount of work to model functions has already been carried out, the literature has not settled on a shared and well-defined approach due to the variety of concepts involved and the modeling tasks that functional descriptions should satisfy. The work in this paper posits the basis and makes some crucial steps towards a rich ontological description of functions and related concepts, such as behaviour, capability, and capacity. A conceptual analysis of such notions is carried out using the top-level ontology DOLCE as a framework, and the ensuing logical theory is formally described in first-order logic and OWL, showing how ontological concepts can model major aspects of engineering products in applications. In particular, it is shown how functions can be distinguished from the implementation methods to realize them, how one can differentiate between capabilities and capacities of a product, and how these are related to engineering functions.

中文翻译：

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迈向工程功能、行为和能力的正式本体论

摘要

在应用本体论和工程中，功能都是一个经过深入研究的主题，因为领域专家通过目的论因果推理来构建工程系统的心理模型，从而催生功能。这些心理模型在任何产品的整个生命周期中都很重要，从设计阶段到诊断活动都在使用。尽管已经进行了大量的函数建模工作，但由于涉及的概念多种多样以及函数描述应满足的建模任务，文献尚未确定一种共享且定义明确的方法。本文的工作为对功能和相关概念（例如行为、能力和能力）进行丰富的本体论描述奠定了基础，并采取了一些关键步骤。使用顶层本体DOLCE作为框架对这些概念进行概念分析，并用一阶逻辑和OWL形式化地描述随后的逻辑理论，展示本体概念如何对应用中的工程产品的主要方面进行建模。特别是，它展示了如何区分功能和实现它们的实现方法，如何区分产品的能力和容量，以及它们如何与工程功能相关。