Expert tutoring system for teaching mechanical engineering

This paper describes the work undertaken, at the Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineers of Gijón, for the development of computer aided systems, in the line of expert systems, concentrating research, and development in the field of mechanical design. We are using this software as an integrated tool in our work for teaching machine design. Models to develop the software of several components are defined, and their application methodology is also presented.

An application which tackles the problem of configuration design, applied to mechanical transmission is also described in this article. The failure of machine elements in mechanical design, frequently occurs due to poorly detailed projects.

The developed work is applied to the design of configurations for mechanical systems, by means of an intelligent program which incorporates the process of geometric design, the calculation of mechanical elements, the selection in electronic databases and the output of CAD plans.

Configuration design is a type of design problem where the different elements (which make up the system, mechanism or machine project object), are selected from databases and connected in order to complete the requirements (functionality, specifications, and established restrictions) outlined in the problem.