Study On Computer Aided Conceptual Design Based On Qualitative Reasoning For Mechanism

Currently, there is no a uniform method for conceptual design whose theory is unripe. Qualitative reasoning is a newly raised technology in the domain of artificial intelligence recently, and has the advantages such as the ability of dealing with the knowledge which is incomplete, imprecise and qualitative, high-efficiency and according with human thinking method and so on. Therefore, it's worthy that the study on applying the qualitative reasoning on conceptual design effectually.In this paper, the course of product conceptual design has been reanalyzed from the view of abstract concept, the efficiency of qualitative knowledge has been emphasized, the necessity of application of qualitative reasoning on conceptual design has been pointed out especially. Based on researching deeply several reasoning methods available, a qualitative model for mechanism is provided according to the conceptual of confluence introduced by de.Kleer and the constraint propagation to be carried out on it. This paper presents a qualitative reasoning frame supporting computer aided conceptual design for mechanism. With the conceptual design of plane four-rod organization, the method of causal relationship setting-up and the process of constraint propagation have been exposited and algorithms related with them are constructed. At last, qualitative reasoning system supporting conceptual design for plane four-rod organization is proposed to verify the work in qualitative reasoning above.