Expert Systems in Mechanical Engineering Design

The paper presents an engineering design model for innovative design (i.e. variation of working principles), which represents a deep knowledge of an expert system for configuring technical systems (i.e. from simple to complex assemblies). A knowledge base contains functional descriptions of building blocks (i.e. components of different level of complexity). An expert system can also synthesize functional structures which are used then as shallow knowledge to configure technical systems with equivalent models of shape. Also a flexible functional structure is used to manage models of shape properly.