Development of an agent-based workbench supporting collaborative structural design

This paper presents an approach towards an adaptive, expandable, decentralized and flexible workbench supporting complex structural design processes using multiagent systems technology. Primarily, this novel workbench aims at assisting design experts according to their specific tasks during a project work and furthermore detecting typical deficiencies and conflicts that may occur in collaboration, cooperation and coordination between the various structural designers. The workbench consists of a set of software agents, that are designed and modeled to integrate typical organizational characteristics of a project work, engineering software and data structures in terms of product models. According to the analysis of structural design processes a theoretical concept of three agent-based submodels is suggested: i) the agent-based collaboration model, ii) the agent-based engineering software integration model and iii) the agent-based product model. In this paper we focus on the agent-based collaboration model. The three models are connected by an agent-based process model. The fundamental solution concepts of this approach are to be substantiated by analyzing the design process of an arched bridge, already erected, as a reference.