Design Analogy by Functional Case Modeling and BioTRIZ in Biologically Inspired Design

Design knowledge representation has gained considerable attention due to its critical role in understanding complex biological cases and knowledge reuse among various design models in biologically inspired design (BID). Aiming to enhance the knowledge reuse and problem-solving process in BID, this paper presents a systematic knowledge representation and design analogy methodology by combining functional case modeling and BioTRIZ. Functional case modeling is first proposed for knowledge representation and case organization of biological cases. Then, two design analogy approaches are developed, namely functional case retrieval and BioTRIZ. In functional case retrieval, bio-logical cases are retrieved by desired functions through functional reasoning and similarity measurement. In BioTRIZ, design problems are first transformed into a generic BioTRIZ problem, which is denoted as a set of conflict pairs. Afterwards, inventive principles are indexed through a contradiction matrix. Related biological cases are further retrieved under corresponding inventive principles. Functional case models are provided to illustrate the internal mechanism of the biological cases. A computer-aided design support system is developed to facilitate the proposed problem-solving process. The results show that the proposed method can not only strengthen the process of knowledge representation but also the procedure of design analogy in BID.