A blackboard system for the construction of composite materials

A knowledge-based application system for composite material design is presented. The system supports the engineer in designing optimized composite materials for highly stressed structural components of technical systems, e.g., a piston ring for an engine. Such components often require material properties which cannot be found within one specific material. Furthermore, in designing and producing composite materials, several other objectives. e.g. economical or ecological ones. can be achieved more adequately. To integrate the diverse, heterogeneous sources of knowledge and to build a modular. easily extensible system. a blackboard architecture has been chosen. The architecture is presented, and the usefulness of the system is illustrated by means of an example.<>