Problem Solving In Engineering UsingQuantitative Knowledge

An object-oriented knowledge based system has been implemented to solve simple quantitative problems in engineering. In this system, knowledge consists of the laws of engineering represented by Formulae as found in a text book, linked to the data on corresponding quantities. The Object-Oriented Paradigm has successfully provided a natural and uniform representation of this kind of quantitative knowledge and facilitated problem solving. This has been achieved using the Problem Decomposition strategy, representing the problem space as an AND/OR tree. The Depth-first Recursive Search was then used to retrieve the formulae and data in the correct sequence to solve the problem. The system has been implemented on a Sun Spare station using the C++ development environment, Objectworks. It has been used to solve a number of simple problems in mechanical and electrical engineering.