A Flexible CBR Tool for Intelligent System of Vehicle Body Conceptual Design

Designing a new vehicle is an extremely challenging and a complex process and design experience is needed very much. To reuse the design experience in vehicle body conceptual design system, a flexible CBR (case-base reasoning) module is developed to manage and index the case in design. The concepts of meta-meta-case and meta-case are represented and the method to construct hierarchical structure case schema in the module. Meta-cases and cases are stored in a relational database. An open-structure CBR tool is also developed to describe more complex hierarchic structure for CAD and CAE data in vehicle body concept design, which can offer good support for body case-based design. It can support case definition, case store, case reusing, case retrieving and modifying. Detail design of case is shown and the mechanism of case management is also described in the paper. The module has been embedded in vehicle body concept design system as knowledge core and can guidance user to implement his vehicle concept design.