Developing Domain Ontologies and an Integration Ontology to Support Modeling and Simulation of Next-Generation Ground Vehicle Systems

The development of next-generation ground vehicle systems relies on modeling and simulation to predict vehicle performance and conduct trade studies in the design and acquisition process. In this paper, we describe the development of an 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. 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 domains ontologies. The ontology suite, developed using the Web Ontology Language (OWL), leverages existing modeling and simulation knowledge (i.e., 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 demonstrate the use 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.