METALogic (Belgium)

Abstract The AUSCOR program is among the most advanced materials performance prediction expert systems known to the authors. Developed over several years (circa 1980-86) primarily by the late Dr. John G. Hines, AUSCOR predicts the performance of some 28 stainless steel and nickel-based chromium-bearing alloys in a wide range of aqueous environments. Built for internal proprietary use within Hines’s employer ICI pic, AUSCOR is relatively unknown to the international materials science and engineering community. Furthermore, AUSCOR was developed for use on outmoded hardware using software which is now obsolete, and only limited documentation has survived. The authors are engaged in a project to modernize the AUSCOR program and distribute the results eventually to a broader community of users. Details of the AUSCOR program and the overall modernization project are described.

Abstract The requirements for corrosion expert systems have never been clearly stated, though many expert system developers must have had a “typical” user in mind, when designing their application. Reviewing some of the developed systems has shown that there exist quite some different approaches. In this paper, some general guidelines will be presented which pertain both to the development of expert systems in general, as well as to the development of expert systems for corrosion, in particular. Most of these guidelines stem from experience with the development of a large-scale expert system for materials selection and corrosion analysis, PRIME. The following topics will be discussed: concepts that affect design and construction, architectural issues, the selection of requisite expert system components in conjunction with user requirements, design issues affected by task type and organizational constraints.