Development and application of knowledge-based software for railcar frame welding process

Abstract

As main welded components of the rail vehicle, the railcar frames have specific needs in preparing a suitable welding document for each welded joint to guide the welding process during the manufacturing process. In this paper, the expert system and database technology are introduced into the field of rail vehicle welding process preparation, and a knowledge-based software for railcar frame welding process is developed. This system could maintain the normal operation of the enterprise rail welding system based on knowledge base and database. The numerous paper-based and fragmented electronic documents are stored in a unified format within the system’s database, and a reasoning mechanism based on Rule-Based Reasoning (RBR) and Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) is designed to intelligently match the welding procedure specification (WPS) and welding procedure qualification report (WPQR) online. Furthermore, the system supports multiple departments and personnel by integrating the function of workflow to carry out the WPS prepare and review process. Thousands of welded joints with various structures and complex positions in the same vehicle body can be aggregated into a welding summary table to reduce the repeated welding procedure qualifications (WPQ) of the same or similar welding joint. This method not only saves manpower and resources, but also ensures the accuracy of these process documents. In the end, the future development trend of this kind of application software is prospected.