Building an Expert System for Engineering Design Based on the Object-Oriented Knowledge Representation Concept

Abstract

An expert system is developed for engineering design based on an object-oriented knowledge representation concept. The design process is understood as determining design variables and their relationships which compose the design model. The design model is represented as a network in the computer system using the object-oriented knowledge representation. The system built with the above concept provides the following abilities: (1) flexible model building and easy modification, (2) effective diagnosis of the design process, (3) supporting method for redesign, (4) a hybrid function with numerical computations and graphics, and (5) applicability for various design problems. Finally, it is applied to the basic design of a ship.

EFDEX: A Knowledge-Based Expert System for Functional Design of Engineering Systems

“…An increasingly popular modeling representation is the object-oriented representation. Akagi and Fujita [14] used an object-oriented architecture for supporting the functional design process. The model for the design process is constructed using networks composed of knowledge elements, which are represented modularly in objects.…”

Agent-Based Distributed Design System Architecture for Basic Ship Design

“…As for the computational support or automation for respective tasks mentioned above, knowledge based techniques and search-based artificial intelligence techniques are applicable for individual ones [1][2][3][4]. Especially, the concept of object-oriented programming techniques is useful for representation and computation scheme for parametric design parts [1]. 3.…”

“…The concept of object-oriented programming techniques, which is a descendant of actor theory, frame representation, etc., has been appropriate for the integration of operation with representation under the entity-attribute relationship [5]. As for the usage of object orientation in design systems, Akagi and Fujita developed an expert system for parametric design [1]. They also integrated it with geometry design [3] and catalog selection of a propulsion engine and plant components [2] for basic ship design.…”

“…As aforementioned, the parametric design tasks can be effectively implemented with an object-oriented programming technique [1]. Since it is generally a powerful programming paradigm and it is furthermore suitable for agent programming in the aspects of encapsulation, message-passing mechanism and so forth, we use object orientation as a foundation toward agent-based distributed computation.…”

“…Iterative and recursive executions of DECIDE and CANCEL methods principally form a design process [1].t In order to parallelize the design operations based on underlying concurrency, first, the requests of DECIDE or CANCEL methods should be simultaneously sent to corresponding objects. Second, the agent-based distribution of objects can parallelize method executions over the different computational resources for respective agents, when such a mechanism is implemented with the multi-tasking mechanism of a particular computer language.…”