AN EXPERT ASSISTANT TO MONITOR FINITE-ELEMENT SIMULATIONS

This paper reports on our experience in developing an expert system pr ototype (expert assistant) to monitor a full finite element simulation . The expert assistant acts as a consultant during the simulations, ad vising the user in the mesh analysis, the prescription of boundary con ditions, the assessment of numerical results, and the choice of the va rious numerical parameters involved in the simulation. The prototype w as shown to perform very well in detecting errors and inconsistencies during the simulation preparation, and analyzing the reliability of th e solution. In the article, the general structure of the expert protot ype is described along with the various knowledge bases used during in ference.