The purpose of this study is to explore the use of existing technology in expert systems, particularly in the area of knowledge acquisition, for the development of more advanced design tools for structural engineering. The study will look at both sources of knowledge acquisition using an existing system, HI-RISE, as a basis. HI-RISE is an expert system for the preliminary structural design of high-rise buildings. The study is divided into three tasks. The first task involves the calibration of HI-RISE with recognized experts in the domain of structural design of high-rise buildings. The second task involves the development of an automated knowledge acquisition module for structural design problems. During this task, a generic expert system framework for structural design will be developed using the basic representation and control strategy in HI-RISE. The third task is the incorporation of machine learning in HI-RISE using some of the elementary mechanisms developed in the artificial intelligence community.
