Expert systems in industrial engineering

An expert system can be denned as ‘a tool which has the capability to understand problem specific knowledge and use the domain knowledge intelligently to suggest alternate paths of action’. This paper presents a structured framework for the development of an expert system. The five major aspects of expert system development are: Problem definition; knowledge acquisition, representation and coordination; inference mechanism; implementation; and learning. These aspects are illustrated through the help pf a modular robot configuration prototype expert system. Several industrial engineering applications in the areas of process planning, facilities planning, and maintenance and fault diagnosis are discussed and a comparative analysis of the different systems is presented.     

TREE-EXPERT: a tree-based expert system for fault tree construction

This paper addresses the topic of automatic fault tree construction, utilizing an expert system with Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and presents the related software tool, TREE-EXPERT—an expert system for automatic fault tree construction. In the light of the features involved in developing a fault tree, a new and more reasonable structure of knowledge representation, which is knowledge tree based, has been established. The knowledge tree provides the means by which component failure behaviors can be described by a group of particular fault tree modules instead of production rules. By introducing the conditional branch function, the new design of the knowledge base incorporates many good features such as strong expressivity, flexibility and ease of extension and it takes advantage of the user's familiarity with the field of fault tree analysis. Additionally, the design of the inference engine is original in that it deals with nodes, which it treats, as special components, so that many complicated engineering cases, such as the application of success criteria, and the problems of flow diversions and flow reversals in a process system, can be well managed and the function of the expert system is improved as a whole. TREE-EXPERT can be used to deal with large-scale and complicated engineering systems, and many engineering factors can be considered, e.g. more than one system parameter and the effect on them switching of the system operating states, bi-directional inference, human error failure, common-cause failure, maintenance and test, etc. On the other hand, the software uses P & ID (Pipe & Instrument Diagram) type interface to describe the system topology, which provides an easier man-machine interface with powerful graphics functions. This software can handle not only ‘process’ systems but also, with appropriate additions to the generic knowledge base, electrical systems and other similar systems.     

用数据流思想开发故障诊断知识库

本文分析了目前在故障诊断专家系统知识库构造方面存在的问题，研究了大型旋转机械故障诊断领域知识的构成特点和表达形式。为了保证故障诊断知识库的通用性、管理与维护的方便性和可靠性，引入了面向数据流的软件设计思想，并利用这种思想构造了一个汽轮发电机组故障诊断专家系统的知识库管理系统。     

中央空调的故障诊断系统

阐述专家控制系统的特点和中央空调的组成，描述中央空调专家控制系统结构，详细说明该系统的软、硬件设计。该系统是以微型计算机为上位机，以PLC为下位机的控制系统。软件的设计着重于专家控制系统软件的开发。     

专家系统在拆除爆破中的应用

拆除爆破是一门理论上发展尚不完善，在实际工程中仍主要依赖于设计者经验的应用学科，专家系统在这一领域的应用研究显得十分必要。本文简述了专家系统在工程爆破中的应用现状，分析了专家系统在拆除爆破中的应用研究的意义，并对专家系统在拆除爆破中应用研究的可行性和发展前景进行了探讨。     

专家系统在拆除爆破中的应用

拆除爆破是一门理论上发展尚不完善，在实际工程中仍主要依赖于设计者经验的应用学科，专家系统在这一领域的应用研究显得十分必要。本文简述了专家系统在工程爆破中的应用现状，分析了专家系统在拆除爆破中的应用研究的意义，并对专家系统在拆除爆破中应用研究的可行性和发展前景进行了探讨。     

Expert systems for emergency alarms analysis during accident situations in nuclear reactors

Expert system development is an important application of artificial intelligence. During the last few years, many successful expert systems have been developed in various fields like medical diagnosis, geological exploration, office management, etc. Expert systems is a computer software which solves reasonably complex problems where normally one needs an expert in that field to solve them.Recently efforts are being made in developing expert systems to support the operating staff in nuclear reactors. Nuclear power plant is one of the most complex engineering systems and safe and reliable operation is of primary importance. In spite of many automatic and redundant safety systems there are some occasions when the operating staff have to analyse the alarms and take further safety actions. Few of the severe accidents like Three Mile Island in USA and Chernobyl in USSR are attributed to the errors made by the operating staff and/or management. Nuclear engineers or systems analysts who may be expert in analysing an accident situation and advise corrective safety actions may not be readily available during the accident situations in the nuclear power plants. It is possible to model such expert knowledge in expert systems and this can be applied in diagnosing an accident situation like the loss of coolant accident (LOCA) and act as an additional confirmatory aid to the operating staff.Two small expert systems examples have been developed and are explained in this paper. One identifies a spurious LOCA alarm in a heavy water research reactor. The second example identifies the type of medium/small leakage (LOCA) in a coolant circuit of a PWR and suggests the subsequent safety actions. Both the examples have been developed using the expert systems shell VP-expert. They are off-line usable and user interactive. We do not propose expert system application for very fast response safety actions like reactor scram. These two small expert system examples are essentially to support the feasibility study in their applications during accident situations in nuclear power plants.     

《园林工程制图》课程教材的若干问题

阐述了园林工程专业的《园林工程制图》教材的课程体系与内容安排,提出了园林工程图的分类,图形表达方法的特点,以及对园林工程图绘图技能的教学特点。     

Expert process planning system with solid model interface

Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques provide various tools for use in the development of automated process planning systems. AI can be utilized for automated reasoning about the shape, features and relationship between features and for development of expert systems for creating the process plan itself. Most of the previous work on AI in process planning deals with one specific application. This paper presents an integrated hierarchical framework of a process planning system with a CAD interface. The objective of the project discussed in the paper is to integrate design with process planning using AI techniques. The development of a CAD interface is discussed with respect to automated feature recognition, determination of tool approach direction and deciding the precedence relationship between the features. Sample results from the CAD interface are presented. The expert system for the process planning module is discussed with the part representation and knowledge base and the plan generation procedure. The module uses hierarchically organized frames for both part representation and the knowledge base. Some initial results are presented from the process planner to demonstrate the current capability of the system.     

Relational Logging Design Pattern

Observability and traceability of developed software are crucial to its success in software engineering. Observability is the ability to comprehend a system’s internal state from the outside. Monitoring is used to determine what causes system problems and why. Logs are among the most critical technology to guarantee observability and traceability. Logs are frequently used to investigate software events. In current log technologies, software events are processed independently of each other. Consequently, current logging technologies do not reveal relationships. However, system events do not occur independently of one another. With this perspective, our research has produced a new log design pattern that displays the relationships between events. In the design we have developed, the hash mechanism of blockchain technology enables the display of the logs’ relationships. The created design pattern was compared to blockchain technology, demonstrating its performance through scenarios. It has been determined that the recommended log design pattern outperforms blockchain technology in terms of time and space for software engineering observability and traceability. In this context, it is anticipated that the log design pattern we provide will strengthen the methods used to monitor software projects and ensure the traceability of relationships.     

真空冶金设备抽气装置专家系统及应用实例

介绍了专家系统的特点和应用,分析了大型真空冶金抽气装置的特性、故障多发原因以及排查中的困难,指出采用专家系统的可行性和实际意义,明确了在真空冶金抽气装置中建立专家系统的具体内容.以宝钢RH-KTB炉外精炼真空系统为例,给出了设备运行监测方案,建立了专家系统知识库,编制的软件可对设备的运行状态进行即时评价和故障预报,当真空系统出现故障时,采用逆向推理机制,从目标出发,寻找故障可能原因,并给出推理解释.专家系统对监测参数阈值的机器学习,提高了专家系统实际应用中的推理效率和准确性.专家系统软件经离线测试和现场在线应用达到预期的目标,可以推广应用.     

OPSYN: A CAD BASED EXPERT SYSTEM FOR OPTIMUM STRUCTURAL SYNTHESIS

This paper presents an overview of an expert system, OPSYN, for optimum structural synthesis, with particular emphasis on the significance of the development environment for such systems. The knowledge base for this system includes rules for facilitating finite element modeling, optimum design modeling, and selection of optimization strategies and parameters. The environment for this development is an inference engine with both forward and backward reasoning capabilities, a detailed explanation facility, and an automated knowledge acquisition system with a knowledge base editor facility. The use of a computer aided design (CAD) interface with its significant data structure and graphics capabilities in the knowledge acquisition and knowledge representation process is demonstrated with this expert system.     

Assessing the Process Maturity Utilized in Software Engineering Team Project Courses*

Many computer science departments offer an introductory software engineering course, which normally provides an introduction to software engineering topics in conjunction with a semester long team project. To ensure students acquire the correct lessons from this project experience, it is essential that the teams utilize well‐defined software development processes similar to those practiced by leading software development organizations. Since its inception, the Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model (CMM) has served as a guide for organizations seeking to improve their development practices, through a self‐assessment questionnaire. In an effort to assess the maturity of development practices utilized in software engineering courses, an “academic” version of the CMM questionnaire was developed. This questionnaire was distributed to a sample of software engineering instructors in an effort to assess the maturity of academic software engineering course projects. The questionnaire and the survey results are presented and discussed.     

Knowledge verification for fuzzy expert systems

Abstract

The introduction and use of fuzzy logic has strengthened knowledge representation and reasoning capability in expert systems; nevertheless, it also increases the complexity and difficulty of knowledge verification, which is known to be an important issue for building reliable and high performance expert systems. In the past decade, knowledge verification problems, e.g., redundancy, conflict, circularity and incompleteness of knowledge, have been widely discussed from the viewpoint of using binary logic; nevertheless, the issue of verifying fuzzy knowledge is seldom discussed. In this paper, we attempt to detect potential structural errors among fuzzy rules by proposing a fuzzy verification algorithm. Moreover, a system for verifying fuzzy knowledge base has been developed based on the novel approach.     

我国软件与系统工程标准化研究综述

软件工程将工程化的思想贯穿到软件的分析、设计、实现和维护的生存周期全过程,涵盖完成一个软件产品所必备的思想、理论、方法、技术、工具和环境.软件工程标准化通过制定、贯彻并监督实施标准,规范软件工程过程和方法,提高软件产品质量和工作效率,对软件行业的发展起着举足轻重的作用.本文对软件工程及标准化情况进行综述,并对软件工程重点领域的发展和标准化趋势进行分析总结.首先,本文总结软件工程的发展历程,对软件工程发展各阶段的技术和标准化重点进行分析,然后通过对国际标准和我国标准进行对比,剖析出我国软件工程及软件工程标准化情况,最后归纳总结我国软件工程标准化现存的问题和下一步研究工作的重点.     

Expert systems: A short introduction

Expert systems are rapidly growing in diversity of application and usage worldwide. Even though expert system development has been slow in applying expert systems to the specific field of structures, expert system technology has been pervasive in other areas of engineering and manufacturing. This paper provides a short introduction on expert systems, looking at their development, application and future trends.     

Everyday Problem Solving in Engineering: Lessons for Engineering Educators

Practicing engineers are hired, retained, and rewarded for solving problems, so engineering students should learn how to solve workplace problems. Workplace engineering problems are substantively different from the kinds of problems that engineering students most often solve in the classroom; therefore, learning to solve classroom problems does not necessarily prepare engineering students to solve workplace problems. These qualitative studies of workplace engineering problems identify the attributes of workplace problems. Workplace problems are ill‐structured and complex because they possess conflicting goals, multiple solution methods, non‐engineering success standards, non‐engineering constraints, unanticipated problems, distributed knowledge, collaborative activity systems, the importance of experience, and multiple forms of problem representation. Some implications for designing engineering curricula and experiences that better prepare students for solving workplace problems are considered.     

特征展开三I Fuzzy推理模型及其在专家系统中的应用

推导出了专家系统中基于三Ⅰ机制的特征展开Fuzzy推理模型。以作物病虫害的诊断与防治专家系统为实例，在雄风4.1专家系统开发平台中，巧妙运用规则对象块的“规则架 规则体“的规则组织知识表示方法，实现了该平台上的特征展开三ⅠFuzzy推理。给出了其Fuzzy EBNF语法定义，讨论了采用知识表示策略实现Fuzzy推理的灵活优越性。该模型在雄风系列专家系统开发平台中尚属首次使用，并且具有广泛的适用性。     

知识的层次表示和推理的非单调真值维护的研究

研究了专家系统中知识的多重表示情况下推理的非单调真值维护。指出了专家系统中知识的多重表示的必要性，以及知识的多重表示情况下可能出现的推理的不一致性。着重讨论了知识的层次表示和优先级的划分。基于领域知识的优先级，分层ＡＴＭＳ被用来实现推理的非单调真值维护。给出了Ｓｔｒａｔｉｆｉｅｄ ＡＴＭＳ的推理和真值维护的算法。     

The Creative Experience in Engineering Practice: Implications for Engineering Education

This research came about as an outgrowth of mounting concern among industrial leaders about the impact of traditional engineering education on the creative potential of future engineers. As there is little agreement on creativity or how to teach it, we chose to begin the study without assuming a theoretical stance about engineering creativity. Instead, we started with a search for first-hand information about creativity and the creative process experienced by working engineers. This phenomenological research paradigm is a way to describe a complex, dynamic experience without prior assumptions, the results of which can then be used to generate theory or develop a structure directly from the data. This approach has similarities to an expert system development, in which the knowledge and skills of an expert are gathered and processed to develop an understanding of the system or phenomenon. Eight professional engineers from the southeastern United States were selected by peer nomination as examples of (expert) creative engineers. They were trained in different areas of engineering (eg. chemical, mechanical, industrial) and worked in organizations ranging from large international consulting firms to small regional businesses. These subjects were interviewed about their experiences in doing creative work and their thoughts about the creative process, including the impact of relevant educational experiences. These interviews were audio-recorded and subjected to a phenomenological data analytic procedure, which extracted the experiential themes and educational issues. The experiential themes involved in the creative process of working engineers clustered as

• ? Desire and fulfillment (motivation),
• ? Autonomy and support (environment),
• ? Openness and knowledge (tools), and
• ? Engrossment and connection (process).

This paper discusses the implications and application of these themes for curricular innovation in engineering education.