A knowledge-based expert system for roll pass and profile design for shaperolling of round and square bars

In shape rolling, the determination of roll pass and profile design is of i mportance. In the present investigation, a knowledge-based expert system is developed for the design of roll pass and profile sequences for the shape rolling of round and square bars. For development of the program, C+ + lang uage and an object oriented programming technique were utilized in consider ation of the flexibility and expandability of the program. A backward chain ing algorithm was employed for the inference engine to determine the manufa cturing sequences in reverse order based on design rules extracted from the literature. For optimization of the process sequence design, the number of roll passes was minimized by comparing the error between the inferred roll passes and the initial error provided as input. In the currently developed expert system, five geometries such as box, square, diamond, oval and roun d were introduced as a basic geometry to describe the intermediate roll geo metries. In addition, the roll separating force, area reduction and change of length at each stage of shape rolling were determined and displayed on t he monitor of a personal computer. The system was applied for the shape rol ling of round and square bars. The process sequences determined were proven to be reasonable compared to those available at practice. (C) 1999 Elsevie r Science S.A. All rights reserved.