A Knowledge-based Design Aid for Superheaters Employing Pseudo-random Search
本文介绍了一种结合知识表示与伪随机搜索的辅助工具，用于降低化石燃料锅炉中过热器的材料成本，测试显示平均可节省10%的材料费用。
This paper describes a knowledge-based design aid for creating low-cost superheaters in fossil-fuel boilers. Design problems in general are notably ill-structured. The superheater design problem, in particular, is made difficult by the presence of special pricing functions and discounts to the boiler-maker. The approach used in the design aid combines a frame-based representation structure for the knowledge used to create superheaters with a pseudo-random search technique for improving the cost of the design. The emphasis in this paper is on the use of the search technique. An application is presented which is typical of the results observed during testing of the design aid. The average savings in material costs by using this aid are 10% of total material costs per superheater.