Abstract
The quality of knowledge-based system's knowledge architecture is one of decisive factors of knowledge-based system's validity and rationality. For designing the ASME code knowledge based system, this paper presents a knowledge acquisition method which is extracting knowledge through document analysis consulted domain experts' knowledge. Then the paper describes knowledge architecture of design by analysis based on the related rules in ASME code. The knowledge of the knowledge architecture is divided into two categories : one is empirical knowledge, and another is ASME code knowledge. Applied as the basement of the knowledge architecture, a general procedural process of design by analysis that is met the engineering design requirements and designers' conventional mode is generalized and explained detailed in the paper. For the sake of improving inference efficiency and concurrent computation of KBS, a kind of knowledge Petri net (KPN) model is proposed and adopted in expressing the knowledge architecture. Furthermore, for validating and verifying of the empirical rules, five knowledge validation and verification theorems are given in the paper. Moreover the research production is applicable to design the knowledge architecture of ASME codes or other engineering standards.
