Development of expert system for biobased polymer material selection: food packaging application

Abstract

Biobased food packaging materials are gaining more attention owing to their intrinsic biodegradable nature and renewability. Selection of suitable biobased polymers for food packaging applications could be a tedious task with potential mistakes in choosing the best materials. In this paper, an expert system was developed using Exsys Corvid software to select suitable biobased polymer materials for packaging fruits, dry food and dairy products. If – Then rule based system was utilized to accomplish the material selection process whereas a score system was formulated to facilitate the ranking of selected materials. The expert system selected materials that satisfied all constraints and selection results were presented in suitability sequence depending on their scores. The expert system selected polylactic acid (PLA) as the most suitable material.