| Abstract: | Constraint is a powerful representation to formulate and solve problems in design; a constraint-based approach to intelligent support of nuclear reactor design will be proposed in this paper. We will first discuss the features of the approach, and then present the architecture of a nuclear reactor design support system under development. In this design support system, the knowledge base contains constraints useful to structure the design space as object class definitions, and several types of constraint resolvers are provided as design support subsystems. The adopted methods of constraint resolution will be explained next in detail. The usefulness of the approach will be demonstrated using two design problems: design window search and multiobjective optimization in nuclear reactor design. |
