Rule-based design of a material processing component

The main thrust of this research is in developing aknowledge-based system for the design of components for a material processing system. In particular, this paper concentrates on developing methodologies forinitial design andredesign in a quantitative and qualitative format. A die for plastic extrusion has been selected as the subject material processing component. A design algorithm using best first heuristic search and expert knowledge, both in procedural and declarative form, is the core of the scheme. Apart from this expert, the suggestedselection procedure for candidate design is also seen to accelerate the design scheme. The methodologies presented enableefficient design of the component. Some generality has been accomplished by the implementation of the techniques to dies of different cross-sectional shapes. The software is written inLisp within an object-oriented software package using analysis modules written in C.