DESIGN KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION AND CONTROL FOR THE STRUCTURAL DESIGNOF SHIPS

Our main concern is to identify the major issues related to representi ng and controlling design knowledge for large scale structures such as ships in routine parametric redesign. In our view, the most difficult problems can occur in the complexity of representing the design objec t and the need for a formal way of describing rules for classification that play the most important role in providing design expertise used for the structural design of ships. Hence, we present a complex object -based knowledge representation whose key feature is that the contents of all the knowledge-base, including the design process, are expresse d only by objects and classes. Also, we devise an inference mechanism, called the CORE (complex object-based inference) mechanism, that is b ased on a hypothesis-object. To illustrate how the CORE mechanism work s in a realistic domain, design systems for the deck structure and mid ship section of bulk cargo ships are implemented, and some running exa mples are presented. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.