United States of America As Represented by the Secretary of the Air Force

C William Lee

Steven R LeClair

Ronald A Servais

Frances L Abrams

John B Park

Patrick H Garrett

An automated, close-loop system for controlling the autoclave cure of fiber reinforced composites uses multiple expert systems hosted on different microprocessors running concurrently to control the cure process. This qualitative process controller uses sensory feedback to determine matrix material state-of-cure and then makes control decisions and executes control commands to the autoclave to attain desired material properties. The sensory information is interpreted and translated into a qualitative cure-state description by a system known as a parser hosted on a 68000 processor. The cure state description is then analyzed by the expert system known as the thinke hosted on another 68000 processor. The control decisions are determined using symbolic logic programmed as a rule-based paradigm generated from a human expert on the cure process. Once made, these control decisions are then posted to a blackboard hosted on an 80286 processor for execution by the autoclave feedback controller.

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Centerville, OH, United States of America

C William Lee