A Hybrid System Combining Description Logics and Rules for Inventive Design

Knowledge acquisition and capitalization to solve problems concerning artefact evolution, still called inventive design, has a certain quantity of specific characteristics. The theoretical approach we are interested in, called TRIZ (the Russian acronym for Theory for Inventive Problem Solving), when translated into a methodological procedure, can be declined into two different steps: problem formulation and problem resolution. This article presents an analysis of two of the most used knowledge bases of TRIZ during the resolution stage. These knowledge bases have been formalized by the construction of an ontology of the informal knowledge sources usually used by the TRIZ experts. This approach has permitted the design of a software architecture that eases the implementation of these bases by means of their declarative manipulation. It combines rules and description logics for populating the ontology and facilitates the access to the compiled generic knowledge that synthesizes, at an abstract level, the already encountered problems and their solutions.