Contemporary Cybernetics

A computer‐based expert system to help industry diagnose and solve corrosion problems has been developed by the U.K.'s National Physical Laboratory and Harwell's Metals Technology Centre. A prototype of the system has already been demonstrated widely in both the U.K. and the U.S. Other industrial sectors could well follow this lead and develop similar systems using expert systems. The main users of this system will be those associated with the metal, process and petrochemical industries. Such a system will be able to provide direct and rapid access to an extensive database on corrosion together with diagnostic and evaluation facilities for identifying and solving corrosion problems. The aim is to construct the full knowledge system and link it with the database in the same way as existing expert systems have been developed. One of the key elements of this system is the use of STATUS, the U.K.'s Harwell information storage and retrieval software package.