A knowledge-based system has been developed which can advise on the typical range of values for a number of geotechnical design parameters. The system makes use of a knowledge base which is structured to represent the ground at different levels of detail. The knowledge base holds ranges of typical values for the parameters for a wide variety of ground types. Different qualitative properties of the ground are also represented within the knowledge base.

The system takes a soil description as input and attempts to match it at the appropriate level of detail within the knowledge base. The match can be done both in terms of the ground type and on qualitative properties such as plasticity, consistency, mineralogy, particle shape etc. The knowledge representation scheme adopted allows combinations of qualitative properties to be considered.

The system has been implemented using the ProKappa development environment on a Sun Sparc2 workstation. ProKappa is an object-oriented knowledge-based system development environment. The knowledge base has been established as an object hierarchy. A graphical user interface has been developed to allow user access to the system.

Provision has been made for users to add their own knowledge to the system. They can add new parameters, extend the number of qualitative properties considered and even establish new ground types.

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