The Ontology-Based Approach Supporting Holistic Energy-Tunnel Design considering Cost, Heat Flux, and System Feasibility

As an emerging geothermal structure, the energy tunnel has been an important part of geothermal engineering. However, the conventional methods for designing energy tunnels mostly rely on complex numerical models. Furthermore, a macrolevel multidomain collaborative design method to consider multiple areas and design indicators is unavailable. This study combined ontology and semantic Web rule language to establish the domain knowledge of energy tunnels which is an enrichment of the conventional ground source heat pump domain knowledge and develop a comprehensive decision-making tool named OntoETS for the design of energy-tunnel systems. The tool can promote the optimal design scheme with an optimal combination of multiple indexes through an analysis of the economy, heat flux, and system feasibility of the energy-tunnel system from a macroperspective by combining multiple domains. Furthermore, a case study was conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicability of the developed holistic decision-making system.