Research And Application Of Expert System For Bolt Gasket Flange Connection Design

With the development of industrial technology, the trends of process devices are becoming superlarge, centralized and informationized in the petrochemical industry. As the basic elements of large process equipments, the flange joints are widely used. It plays an important role in modern large-scale production enterprises. It is not only closely linked with the safe operation in the long period for the large-scale installations, but also involved in energy conservation, environmental protection and human health and safety. Particularly, China is stepping up to improve the environmental management system (EMS) and Occupational Safety and Health Management System (OSH), so more and more petrochemical enterprises and gasket enterprises concern the flange sealing. The new design methods and the new gasketed materials continue appearing in the flange connection, which promotes the study and development of the software of new flange connection design.The thesis uses Visual Basic, Access, AutoCAD, UG, WORD and other softwares, with the ADO Data Control+SQL statement, to design a set of expert system, which is based on the new standards, new technologies and new demands. The main achievements and research contents are as follows:(1) The development of the design specification for the bolt-gasketed flange joints was approached, with studying the fundamental basis on the design methods deeply. The characteristics of methods of the flange connection are mainly researched. In order to reveal differentials between GB150, PVRC and EN1591, especially in the safety and the economy, three design methods and their parameters are discussed and compared, and provides an important reference value for the flange connection.(2) The better query function has been designed, including the reverse query, the advanced query and the test standard query. In the advanced query, a real-time display of2-D and automatically plot are designed by the application development of AutoCAD. And the latest gasketed test standards are provided by the application development of PDFview in the function of the test standard query.(3) In the design module, there are three typical design methods, including GB150, PVRC, EN1591, so it can meet different design requirements. Also there are a3-D views in the output of results. On this basis, the contrast optimization analysis function is established. Therefore, comparing different design parameters can optimize the design in the different scheme.(4) According to the query functions and the needs of the design, a range of the ACCESS database files are made, including expertise database, gasket standard size database, EN1591database and so on. Meanwhile, there are BMP, DOT, DWG, PDF files, which are also the data base for the software.(5) There is a diversity of assisted functions, including toolbar, status bar, background setting, calculator, common unit conversion, the PVRC scale, account management, database management and so on. By using the Power CHM5.7software, a help system is added for the expert system.