Artic: A Knowledge Engineering Approach to Damage Assessment of High Temperature Pressurized Components

Abstract

A research project for the Assessment of Residual life Tlme for Creep damaged components (ARTIC) has been launched. It aims at building an intelligent system for dealing with the assessment of steam headers. The paper describes how the complexity of the problem domain can be handled by the capabilities which the proposed technology exploits. Particularly, the knowledge engineering approach to damage assessment of high temperature pressurized components is addressed.

The expert system ARTIC is a “procedural expert system”. The term “procedural” refers to the fact that the expert system architecture is based on a generalized procedure obtained by merging a set of existing assessment procedures. The procedural features of the expert system are investigated.

The architecture of the system and the structure of the problem solving methodology are shown in the paper, as they result from the knowledge engineering approach to the problem domain.

Moreover, the difficulties of the elicitation stage are presented. Particularly, we address the problem of combination of experts from both the problem domain as well as the knowledge engineering viewpoints.

Lastly, is the part devoted to what can be called the “side effects” of this approach to the problem domain. These side effects mainly concern the methodology adopted to provide a structure to the domain information and the treatment of uncertainty and imperfection pervading the data. The envisaged representation techniques and the results achieved are presented.