DATABASES AND EXPERT-SYSTEMS FOR HIGH-TEMPERATURE CORROSION AND COATINGS

The huge, and rapidly increasing, amount of data existing in the field of high temperature corrosion and high temperature protective coating s stress the need for information systems capable of collecting, evalu ating and retrieving this wealth of information. This paper is a revie w on the currently available data banks and expert systems in the doma in of high temperature corrosion. It first briefly presents the state of knowledge on coatings for hot components of gas turbines and energy systems operating in aggressive environments to show the need for eas ily available and reliable information to select the appropriate coati ng for a specific application. The structures and main characteristics of the different types of computerized information systems, e.g. data bases and data banks, knowledge bases, intelligent data banks and expe rt systems are then described. Finally, the currently available data b ases and expert systems on high temperature corrosion and high tempera ture coatings are reviewed and described, when information is availabl e. Special attention is brought to the problems arising for data base management, e.g. data collection, data updating, data validation and d ata evaluation.