A new method for extracting knowledge from patents to inspire designers during the problem-solving phase

Nowadays, patents are more than an industrial property protection,they constitute a considerable source of information. Several approaches deal with the extraction of pertinent information from patents, some of them translate that information into useful knowledge for problem-solving purposes. However, very few methods use a physical approach and a consistent analysis of the main function inthe problem definition phase. This paper proposes a new method to inspire designers with ideas and analogous solutions. The objective is to contribute to solve complex technical problems by exploiting knowledge found in patent documents. The method is divided into three sections: problem definition, research and analysis, and innovation.The first two sections use iteratively a knowledge base formed by pertinent keywords related to the problem context, physical keywords from functional decomposition and physical analysis, and technological keywords recovered through patent analysis. In the third section, interesting patents are classified in a structured discovery matrix from the physical phenomena involved which are crossed in accordance with the related techniques found. The method is supported by a physical effects database of energy conversion and by evolution trends of technical systems. A deep offshore biphasic separator illustrates the method