Developing maintainable expert systems using case-based reasoning

Abstract: Maintainability problems associated with traditional software systems are exacerbated in rule-based systems. The very nature of that approach — separation of control knowledge and data-driven execution — hampers maintenance. While there are widely accepted techniques for maintaining conventional software, the same is not true for rule-based systems. In most situations, both a knowledge engineer and a domain expert are necessary to update the rules of a rule-based system. This paper presents, first, an overview of the software engineering techniques and object-oriented methods used in maintaining rule-based systems. It then discusses alternate paradigms for expert system development. The benefits of using case-based reasoning (from the maintenance point of view) are illustrated through the implementation of a case-based scheduler. The main value of the scheduler is that its knowledge base can be modified by the expert without the assistance of a knowledge engineer. Since changes in application requirements can be given directly to the system by the expert, the effort of maintaining the knowledge base is greatly reduced.     

Acoustic emission technique for leak detection in an end shield of a pressurised heavy water reactor

This paper discusses the successful application of the Acoustic Emission Technique (AET) for detection and location of leak paths present on the inaccessible side of an end shield of a Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR). The methodology was based on the fact that air and water leak AE signals have different characteristic features. Baseline data was generated from a sound end-shield of a PHWR for characterizing the background noise. A mock up end-shield system with saw cut leak paths was used to verify the validity of the methodology. It was found that air leak signals under pressurisation (as low as 3 psi) could be detected by frequency domain analysis. Signals due to air leaks from various locations of a defective end-shield were acquired and analysed. It was possible to detect and locate leak paths. Presence of detected leak paths were further confirmed by alternate test.     

Influence of Grain Size on Ferroelastic Toughening and Piezoelectric Behavior of Lead Zirconate Titanate

Lead zirconate titanate specimens, at composition Zr_{48.9+- 1.0}/ Ti_51.1+-1.0 of grain sizes ranging from 0.5 to 15 (μm were prepared by hot pressing. The fracture toughness showed a 40% increase in the fine-grained specimens. Poling produced anisotropy in the fracture toughness. A tensor representation for the fracture toughness, now a function of the crack plane normal and the poling direction, is developed. The maximum and minimum values in the toughness tensor are shown to be related to the unpoled toughness by a simple phenomenological relationship. We also find that the piezoelectric coefficient, d₃₃ , shows a slight increase for the fine-grained specimens, which is in conflict with the general view that smaller-grained materials can sustain vanishingly small values of spontaneous polarization.     

Formation of Nanocrystalline Calcia by the Decomposition of Calcite

Formation of nanocrystalline calcia from calcite has been studied in situ via transmission electron microscopy. The crystallographic transformation occurred via two mechanisms: the first is by distortion of the cleaved rhombohedron of calcite, formed by {104} planes in hexagonal coordinates, into a cube. This produced a microstructure of oriented, elongated nanocrystals of calcia with planar boundaries. In the second mechanism, the micrometer-sized parent calcite particles broke up into nano-sized grains as the decomposition began, leading to irregularly shaped, randomly oriented nanocrystals of calcia.     

Analytical study of nuclear-coupled density-wave instability in a natural circulation pressure tube type boiling water reactor

An analytical model has been developed to study the nuclear-coupled density-wave instability in the Indian advanced heavy water reactor (AHWR) which is a natural circulation pressure tube type boiling water reactor. The model considers a point kinetics model for the neutron dynamics and a lumped parameter model for the fuel thermal dynamics along with the conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy and equation of state for the coolant. In addition, to study the effect of neutron interactions between different parts of the core, the model considers a coupled multipoint kinetics equation in place of simple point kinetics equation. Linear stability theory was applied to reveal the instability of in-phase and out-of-phase modes in the boiling channels of the AHWR. The results indicate that the stability behavior of the reactor is greatly influenced by the void reactivity coefficient, fuel time constant, radial power distribution and channel inlet orificing. The delayed neutrons were found to have a strong influence on the Type I and Type II instabilities observed at low and high channel powers, respectively. Also, it was found that the coupled multipoint kinetics model and the modal point kinetics model predict the same threshold power for out-of-phase instability if the coupling coefficient in the former model is half the eigen value separation between the fundamental and the first harmonic mode in the latter model. Decay ratio maps were predicted considering various operating parameters of the reactor, which are useful for its design.     

Design and development of a machine vision system using artificial neural network-based algorithm for automated coal characterization

Coal is heterogeneous in nature,and thus the characterization of coal is essential before its use for a specific purpose.Thus,the current study aims to develop ...     

Photonic-crystal surface-emitting laser near 1.55 /spl mu/m on gold-coated silicon wafer

An InP/InGaAs-based photonic band-edge laser bonded on silicon operating near 1.55 mum is presented. A gold reflector positioned below the slab containing the active layer reduces the optical losses of the Bloch-mode resonator. As a result, a quality factor exceeding 8000 is obtained at transparency leading to a laser threshold as low as 3.4 muJ/cm²     

The Enriched Feature Enhancement Technique for Satellite Image Based on Transforms Using PCNN

The features of the satellite images can be improved by fusing or combining two images with complementary property. By fusing these two images the spatial property of the resultant image is improved. Satellite images are one of the agents that give the features of the earth’s surface. Processing these satellite images will provide more geographical information hidden in the images. This research paper have an detailed insight study of two types of the satellite images one is Panchromatic (PAN) and other Multispectral (MS). The PAN image with high spatial resolution and MS image with spectral resolution are fused to get better resultant output. For fusion process Nonsubsampled Contour let Transform is used to decompose the images into low and high frequency values. Pulse Coupled Neural Network is used to motivate the low frequency pixel and Morphological filter is applied to the edge detected image for finding the features in the images. This is an real time transformations which will give better results in SAR image processing, video processing, stereo based reconstruction of depth and width of the features present in the image.

     

A New Compact Microstrip-Fed Dual-Band Coplanar Antenna for WLAN Applications

A novel compact microstrip fed dual-band coplanar antenna for wireless local area network is presented. The antenna comprises of a rectangular center strip and two lateral strips printed on a dielectric substrate and excited using a 50 Omega microstrip transmission line. The antenna generates two separate resonant modes to cover 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN bands. Lower resonant mode of the antenna has an impedance bandwidth (2:1 VSWR) of 330 MHz (2190-2520 MHz), which easily covers the required bandwidth of the 2.4 GHz WLAN, and the upper resonant mode has a bandwidth of 1.23 GHz (4849-6070 MHz), covering 5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN bands. The proposed antenna occupy an area of 217 mm² when printed on FR4 substrate (epsiv_r=4.7). A rigorous experimental study has been conducted to confirm the characteristics of the antenna. Design equations for the proposed antenna are also developed