An Application of Case Based Reasoning to Predict Structure Maintainability

In order to complete maintainability design and prediction in design stage, case based reasoning (CBR), as an artificial intelligence (AI) method, is used in this paper. The maintainability of structure is considered in design stage. So the cases of structure including not only function factors but also maintainability factors are presented by frame. The retrieval algorithm about similar cases is put forward through two layers: function factors and maintainability factors. With CBR, the method could help designers, by referencing previous cases, to make a conceptual maintainability design and prediction quickly, and finally finish the detailed design and prediction. In this paper a new method is put forward to predict the maintainability of structure in design stage.