Knowledge acquisition facility

A general rule-based expert system consists of six components knowledge base, knowledge acquisition facility, database, inference engine, explanation facility and user interface. A functional integration of these components is shown in Fig. 2.1. The functions of these components are described on the next page. 

Knowledge acquisition facility This component provides a convenient and efficient means for capturing all IF-THEN rules and stores them into the knowledge base. In some expert systems, it also provides an interactive way to enable a domain expert to input knowledge directly in mntime. 

The steady operation of the facility enabled the operator to acquire further knowledge of the behaviour of the plant, to complete the requalification of the woric performed since 1993 to fight sodium fires, and to achieve the acquisitions as scheduled in the KAP (Knowledge Acquisition Programme) ( 5) assigned to Superphenix. Several experiments in the framework of the KAP were performed at the end of 1996. 

ICDB is composed of two subsystems (1) a knowledge acquisition support system and (2) a component server. The component server provides two types of facilities. It (1) generates components from a given component specification and (2) answers queries about generated components. A generated component is represented in a VHDL netlist for logicl-level structure or CIF for layout. 

There are few published data for power draw and pumping capacity in either batch or in-line rotor-stator mixers. Even less is known about the velocity fields in these devices, so there is little hard evidence to support proposed mechanisms for dispersion and emulsification. As a result it is often necessary to rely on equipment vendors for scale-up rules. Although many vendors have facilities for customer trials, few have well-equipped laboratories for acquisition of basic data for performance characterization. In reality, it is difficult to know how many vendor data are available, since many consider the information to be proprietary. Until recently, there has been little academic interest in high-shear mixers. This work is only starting to appear in the open literature, and it is important for the practitioner to stay informed as a body of knowledge evolves. 

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