A Knowledge Based Engineering Application to Support Weight Distribution Analysis for IRL Cars

Knowledge based engineering is a technology whose aim is to provide tools to develop vertical applications which can integrate different types of knowledge representation within a common model and carry out model evaluation, modification and updating. This paper presents a knowledge based engineering application to support the design of Indy Racing League (IRL) cars. The IRL Championship is regulated by a very strict set of technical specifications, which limit the designer as far as car structure and sizes of the parts are concerned. For this reason it is very important to evaluate the effects of modifying main design parameters on the car configuration. The first part of the paper describes how Dallara's know-how on IRL car design has been reorganized with specific reference to the problem of weight distribution. This has led to the definition of a hierarchical IRL car model containing the fundamental parameters for weight computation. In the second part the use of examples highlights that different types of knowledge representation are necessary to compute weights distribution. The final part contains the description of the prototype implemented by using results from the previous phases. Comparing the results obtained with experimental data has validated the application. 2 L. Susca, F. Mandorli, C. Rizzi, and U. Cugini