EXPANDING ORING: AN EXPERT DYSTEM FOR O-RING SELECTION AND GLAND DESIGN.

We report on the design, implementation and verification of an expert system that designs O-rings for high pressure applications. The domain of O-ring design includes the selection of elastomer family and compond, the determination of specific geometry, the gland design, and determination of feasibility with respect to installation and availabilty. The Knowledge, derived from manufacturer's guidelines and engineering experience with high pressure O-ring applications, is cast into casual relations using decision tables. These tables are transformed into modular rules, the knowledge representation scheme used in the OPS5 implementation. The forward chaining inference engine actuates rules and selects optimal elastomer compounds and O-ring sizes from a database accessed by the system. Based on this partial design and additional user input, further rules are activated to design the O-ring gland for each recommended cross section.