An expert assistant to monitor finite element simulations

This paper reports on our experience in developing an expert system prototype (expert assistant) to monitor a full finite element simulation. The expert assistant acts as a consultant during the simulations, advising the user in the mesh analysis, the prescription of boundary conditions, the assessment of numerical results, and the choice of the various numerical parameters involved in the simulation. The prototype was shown to perform very well in detecting errors and inconsistencies during the simulation preparation, and analyzing the reliability of the solution. In the article, the general structure of the expert prototype is described along with the various knowledge bases used during inference.