Information model based weld schedule database

摘要

As part of a computerized system (SmartWeld) developed at Sandia National Laboratories to facilitate agile manufacturing of welded assemblies, a weld schedule database (WSDB) was also developed. SmartWeld's overall goals are to shorten the design-to-product time frame and to promote right-the-first-time weldment design and manufacture by providing welding process selection guidance to component designers. The associated WSDB evolved into a substantial subproject by itself. The current WSDB has over 500 parameters defined in 73 tables. This includes data about the weld, the piece parts involved, the piece part geometry, and great detail about the schedule and intervals involved in performing the weld. This complex database was built using information modeling techniques. The Natural-Language Information Analysis methodology (NIAM) technique was used, which is characterized by: (1) elementary facts being stated in natural language by the welding expert, (2) determinism (the resulting model is provably repeatable, i.e. it gives the same answer every time), and (3) extensibility (the model can be added to without changing existing structure). The information model produced a highly normalized relational schema that was translated to Oracle(trademark) Relational Database Management Systems for implementation.