The Development of an Expert System to Facilitate the Synthesis and Analysis of Hydraulic Directional Control Valves.

This thesis describes the research undertaken in the development of an expert system to facilitate the synthesis and analysis of hydraulic directional control valves. Early research identified the design process as a major bottleneck in the "requirement definition to product" cycle for a company responsible for the design and manufacture of specialised components. The requirements of a design tool were investigated in order to reduce this bottleneck and a design tool concept is proposed in order to fully integrate the design process into a CIM model. The application of a CIM strategy to a small company was also investigated with potential application to the industrial collaborators of the project in mind. Specific company expertise was identified and extracted in the design process relating to the design and development of hydraulic directional control valves requiring specific operating characteristics. An expert system has been developed to provide a company specific solution to a customer requirement for one particular valve in the product range. The expert system has been developed aiming to emulate the role of the designer and areas of work have existed in; (i) Valve block definition and configuration (ii) Operating specification extraction (iii) The relation of existing work (iv) The development of an initial design solution (V) Valve section performance modelling (vi) The redesign process (vii) Automated draughting Initial results from the prototype system have proved encouraging. The modelling techniques developed together with the redesign mechanism can reduce design lead times dramatically and the industrial partners aspects of the project installed on site, this work form the basis of a DTI FAMOS which has been reviewed favourably by the DTI and looks set to provide future financial support for further development.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

PhD

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

De Montfort University

Year dc:date.issued

1990

Author dc:creator

• Paterson, Alan Stanley

Licence

• https://dora.dmu.ac.uk/bitstreams/3c06cd97-7fec-48b8-a238-13d7587447a2/download