Representation of heterogeneous material properties in the Core Product Model

The Core Product Model (CPM) was developed at National Institute of Standards as a high level abstraction for representing product related information, to support data exchange, in a distributive and a collaborative environment. In this paper, we extend the CPM to components with continuously varying material properties. Such components are becoming increasing important and popular due to progress in design, analysis and manufacturing techniques. The key enabling concept for modeling continuously varying material properties is that of distance fields associated with a set of material features, where values and rates of material properties are specified. Material fields, representing distribution of material properties within a component, are usually expressed as functions of distances to material features, and are controlled with a variety of differential, integral or algebraic constraints. Our formulation is independent of any particular platform or representation, and applies to most proposed techniques for representing continuously varying material properties. The proposed model is described using Unified Modeling Language and is illustrated through a number of specific examples.