A Knowledge Based Approach for Affordable Virtual Prototyping: the Drip Emitters Test Case

Virtual prototyping lacks of application in SME due to the costs of software systems and the necessity of skilled operators. The aim is to improve dripper emitters design process reducing costs. A knowledge base is presented to gather data on products behaviour in terms of experimental data and simulation results for a set of meaningful test cases. Input design parameters were linked to performance indices on the base of the correlations emerged in the analysis. Specifications for a new product can be used to extract similar cases and to define a possible solution in terms of a combination of them.