Expert System Approach for Optimization of Design and Manufacturing Process for Rotary Ultrasonic Machining

An expert system for evaluating rotary ultrasonic machining, in concurrent engineering environment and based on object oriented techniques, is developed. The design specification is obtained through a feature based approach. Different classes of design features are interactively acquired. The attributes of different hard and brittle materials like glass, composite, stone and ceramic as work piece materials are stored in database. The system is also linked with tool material and machine databases. For each design feature, information is needed in manufacturing, such as machining cycle time, and cost, penetration rate, and efficiency are estimated by the expert system. Software system such as expert system based on object oriented technique is used to develop the expert system. The system links with a feature based CAD system in order to extract design data. The expert system provides useful information such as machining cycle time and cost, penetration rate, efficiency of machining of the selected design feature for product designers and advises of manufacturing engineers to select optimum machining parameters. In order to test the validity of the system, results of expert system is compared with the results of experimental rotary ultrasonic machining.