Design expert system for full journal bearings

Various architectures used in design expert systems are reviewed. An architecture consisting of several stages of grouped rules is employed and its features are discussed. The architecture uses a rule based production system. Different methodologies for designing hydrodynamic journal bearings are reviewed and an integrated and dependable design methodology is developed. In this Turbo Prolog program, initially, the user is asked to enter the required prescriptive and functional specifications and the decision-criterion. Knowledge bases pertaining to this design problem are represented appropriately. The design solutions of successive states are examined for any violations of the design constraints. The expert system `Fbear' makes an exhaustive search for all the solutions. Utility value of each of the final solutions is calculated and the design solutions having utility values above a certain limit are printed in an output file. The results of `Fbear' are compared with those of the previous workers to illustrate its usefulness.