Tjahjadi T, Leung HY & Langevelde FV

Proc. Singapore Int. Conf. on Intelligent Control and Instrumentation

IEEE Computer Chapter (Singapore Section), vol 1, 1992, 494-499

Abstract

The development of materials and devices for high technology, and detailed study of certain types of biological, geological, bio-chemical, archaeological and extra-terrestrial samples create extensive requirements for analytical characterisation of materials. There is a growing need for techniques that can determine trace element concentrations in a variety of specimens. Monitoring of the production process and assessment of the final product demand such sensitive analysis with precise quantitative results.

This paper presents an expert system which assists its user in selecting one of eleven beam techniques for trace element analysis. Production rules are used to represent the domain expertise in the expert system, and a backward-chaining inference engine is used to select the technique which 'best' matches the user's requirements. The system provides detailed information about the selected technique, and if the chosen technique is SXRF microprobe it also provides assistance in determining the various system set-up parameters to obtain the required results for five specimens. The 'set-up' information is stored as objects.