SP‐100 shield design automation process using expert system and heuristic search techniques

The SP‐100 shield subsystem design process has been modified to utilize the GE Corporate Reserch and Development program, ENGINEOUS (Tong 1990). ENGINEOUS is a software system that automates the use of Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) analysis programs in the engineering design process. The shield subsystem design process incorporates a nuclear subsystems design and performance code, a two‐dimensional neutral particle transport code, several input processors and two general purpose neutronic output processors. Coupling these programs within ENGINEOUS provides automatic transition paths between applications, with no source code modifications. ENGINEOUS captures human design knowledge, as well as information about the specific CAE applications and stores this information in knowledge base files. The knowledge base information is used by the ENGINEOUS expert system to drive knowledge directed and knowledge supplemented search modules to find an optimum shield design for a given reactor definition, ensuring t...