Abstract
The complexity of the design in thermal manufacturing processes stems from the need to simulate complicated heat transfer, fluid flow and phase change phenomena and couple the results with the design rules and knowledge available of these processes to obtain satisfactory designs. In this regard, the ability of expert systems to use heuristic reasoning has proved to be a powerful tool in the computer-aided-design of thermal manufacturing systems.
In this paper, the salient features of a knowledge-based system developed for the design of the ingot casting process has been outlined. A Prolog-based decision-making front-end is interfaced with a Fortran-based computational engine for rapid design. The results from the heat transfer analysis, obtained from the computational module, are coupled to the evaluation module, which checks for satisfaction of the design critera and violation of the design constraints. The decision-making module uses a set of design rules to manipulate the variables until the design specifications are satisfied. Modularity and flexibility are maintained using an object-oriented format. Several interesting design acceleration features like design inheritance from simpler models and design extraction from previous designs are illustrated. The main features of this knowledge-based tool and the savings in time resulting from using these special features are discussed in detail.
Similar content being viewed by others
Abbreviations
- Bi:
-
Biot number
- C p :
-
specific heat, J/kg K
- h:
-
heat transfer co-efficient,W/m 2K
- k:
-
thermal conductivity,W/mK
- L:
-
latent heat, J/kg
- Pr:
-
Prandtl number
- Ste:
-
Stefan number,\(\frac{L}{{C_p \left( {T_i - T_c } \right)}}\)
- T:
-
temperature, K
- τ:
-
time, secs
- T c :
-
temperature of the mold, K
- T i :
-
initial temperature of the liquid, K
- w:
-
width of the mold, (W m−Wo), m
- W(t):
-
half width of the melt region, m
- α:
-
thermal diffusivity,m 2/s
- ν:
-
kinematic viscosity,m 2/s
- phi :
-
superheat,\(\frac{{T_i - T_{sat} }}{{T_{sat} - T_c }}\)
- l:
-
subscript for the melt
- s:
-
subscript for the solid
- m:
-
subscript for the mold
References
Dixon, J.R.; Orelup, J.R.; Simmons, M.K. (1987) Dominic II: More progress towards domain independent design by iterative redesign. In Proceedings of the ASME Winter Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, Vol. 25
Cohen, P.R.; Dixon, J.R.; Howe, A.; Simmons, M.K. (1986) Dominic I: Progress towards domain dependence in design by iterative redesign. Comput. Eng. Conf., 1:199
Jaluria, Y.; Lombardi, D.; Viswanath, R. (1988) Simulation of transport processes in a thermal manufacturing system using symbolic computation. In: Proceedings of the ASME Winter Annual Conference, Chicago, IL
Peskin, R.L.; Russo, M.F. (1988) An object oriented system environment for partial differential equation solution. ASME Int. Comput. Eng. Conf. 1:409–415
Clark, K.L.; Mccabe, F.G. (1984) Microprolog: Programming in logic. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall
Cox, B.J. (1986) Object Oriented Programming. An evolutionary approach. Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA
Viswanath, R. (1988) A knowledge-based CAD system for the design of ingot castings. Masters thesis, Rutgers- The State University of New Jersey
Clark, K.L.; Gregory, S. (1984) PARLOG: Parallel Programming in logic. Research report DOC 84/4, Department of Computing, Imperial College, London
Ghosh, A. and Mallik, A.K. (1986) Manufacturing Science. Wiley, New York, NY
Szekely, J.; Stanek, V. (1970) Natural convection transients and their effects on unidirectional solidification. Metallurgical transactions, pp. 2243–2250
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Viswanath, R., Jaluria, Y. Knowledge-based system for the computer aided design of ingot casting processes. Engineering with Computers 7, 109–120 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01195564
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01195564