An artificial intelligence approach to efficient fusion first wall design

Abstract

This paper describes the application of artificial intelligence techniques to the design automation of the fusion first wall, which will be operated under complex conditions including huge electromagnetic and thermal loading as well as heavy neutron irradiation.

As a basic strategy of the design, the generate and test strategy is adopted because of its simplicity and broad applicability. To automate the design procedure with maintaining flexibility, extensibility and efficiency, some artificial intelligence techniques are utilized as follows:

An object-oriented knowledge representation technique is adopted to store knowledge modules, that is, objects, related to the first wall design. A data-flow processing technique is utilized as an inference mechanism among the knowledge modules. These techniques realize the flexibility and extensibility of the system. In addition, as an efficient design modification mechanism, we introduce an empirical approach based on both experts' knowledge and a fuzzy control technique.

The developed system is applied to a simple example of the design of a two-dimensional model of the first wall with a cooling channel, and its fundamental performance is demonstrated.