Virtual consultant in welding - Creation of the content server

Abstract

In situations where the end users have no domain experts, a virtual consultant in a form of a software surrounding based on updated internet technologies may often show to them the procedure to follow in a given situation in a way in which the particular problem can be solved, as well as the alternative approaches to the welding activities. The paper presents current status of the expert system titled "electronic consulting in welding" which has been developed under the Eureka E!3595 project. The first part assumes creation of a so-called content server as a web application used to represent, store, update and distribute the knowledge and multimedia resources from the domain of welding. Two main units of the content server consider questions received from the end users and provide weldability assessment and computation of welding parameters (at the moment, for two welding procedures). Detailed overview of the later unit is given including description of the constitutive modules - from data input to generation of reports and optimization of computed parameters.