Intelligent Decision Support Systems in Polyer Composites Design; Industrial Focus by Application Segment and Product Line

摘要

Integrating material, component and process design isuses becomes increasingly important as polymer composites penetrate the durable goods market amd as traditional markets like aerospace experience increased afforadability pressures. To factiliate the integration of such issues, a suite of knowledge-based system is being developed for intelligent decision support. Inthe context of integrated design, knowledge-based systems can capture and facilitate the use of engineeering design knowledge, freeing design engineers for more reative tasks and allowing a mre comprehensie exploration of the overall design space. The current suite includes: COMADE, a system for polymer composite material design and COFATE, a system for polymer composite fabrication technology selectrion. COMADE considers performance requirements and enviornmental conditions and generates multiple designs for the matrix materiaols, any necessary dcheimical agents, fiber typeps and fiber length. COFATE evaluates sixteen technnologies using qualiative economics, abstract geometric features and othe rprocessing issues. COMADE and COFATE show the capability to organize and reason about composites design knowledge. A di4rection for their continued development involves focusing their current knowledge and rasoning on specific application market segments or on specific product lines of materials. This work discusses these avenues of development and the impact on intelligent decision support incomposites.