Development of the task-based expert system for machine fault diagnosis

Abstract

The operating mechanism of expert systems widely used in fault diagnosis is to formulate a set of diagnostic rules, according to the mechanism and symptoms of faults, in order to instruct the fault diagnosis or directly give diagnostic results. In practice, due to differences existing in such aspects as production technology, drivers, etc., a certain fault may derive from different causes, which will lead to a lower diagnostic accuracy of expert systems. Besides, a variety of expert systems now available have a dual problem of low generality and low expandability, of which the former can lead to the repeated development of expert systems for different machines, while the latter restricts users from expanding the system. Aimed at these problems, a type of task-based software architecture of expert system is proposed in this paper, which permits a specific optimization based on a set of common rules, and allows users to add or modify rules on a man-machine dialog so as to keep on absorbing and improving the expert knowledge. Finally, the integration of the expert system with the condition monitoring system to implement the automatic and semi-automatic diagnosis is introduced.