Abstract
This paper presents a design strategy in which structural components are designed automatically by applying three types of knowledge: knowledge in a design standard; “textbook” knowledge of structural, material, and geometrical relationships; and knowledge representing designer-dependent design expertise. The design strategy selects from the designer-dependent knowledge source the behavior limitations—limit states of an object in a given stress state—to consider, translates the behavior limitations into a subset of corresponding standard requirements, generates a set of constraints from the requirements and the relations in the knowledge-base of “textbook” relationships, satisfies the constraints, and then checks the satisfaction of all remaining applicable requirements. By using this design strategy, it is possible to construct a knowledge-based design strategy that is standard independent, so that the same design process can be performed regardless of which design standard is explicitly represented.
The design strategy described has been implemented in a prototype knowledge-based system, SPEX, which has a blackboard architecture similar to, but much simpler than, that of HEARSAY. The blackboard represents the level of abstraction through which a component design progresses. The knowledge-base in SPEX consists of several knowledge sources that perform portions of the component design task. Control of the design process knowledge sources in SPEX is rule-based.
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Garrett, J.H., Fenves, S.J. A knowledge-based standards processor for structural component design. Engineering with Computers 2, 219–238 (1987). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01276414
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01276414