Rationale Design And Analysis Of Thickener Structure Based On Knowledge Engineering

Thickener is a large mixing enrichment equipments commonly used in the mining. With the development of the mining industry and the increasingly requirement of national environmental protection requirements, disposal for large amounts of tailings in mine concentrator had become an urgent problem. The demand for achieving high efficiency and energy-saving of the thickener is higher and higher. As a new innovative design method, Knowledge Based Engineering or KBE play larger and larger role in improving product design efficiency and realizing structure innovation. Since the type selection process of the thickener is well inherited, it should be very important in engineering to summarized knowledge and experiences regarding thickeners in order to realize rapid-type-selection and innovative design of a thickener.Firstly, the theory method and process of engineering product design with the use of KBE are introduced with emphasis on the key technology of realizing knowledge engineering. Based on the theory above and the KBE technology related to mechanical design, a thickener’s type selection design frame based on KBE is proposed. According to the requirement of thickener’s type selection design, relevant technologies regarding of obtaining, keeping and using of thickener’s type selection design knowledge are discussed in detail. Methods for realizing type selection of thickener based on RBR (Rule-Based Reasoning) and CBR (Case-Based Reasoning) are studied respectively.Secondly, on the basis of relational database management system software Microsoft Office Access2007, the thickener type selection design system is programmed with Macro language VBA. Combined with tailings technical data example applied in an enterprise, the utilization method and type selection procedures of this system are introduced.Finally, strength design of the thickener selected by the thickener’s type selection system was performed. A finite element model of thickener main structure is established using shell and beam elements of ANSYS. And analysis results show that structure strength and stability is satisfied to the standard requirement, which also proves that the developed thickener type selection system is reliable and practical.