The authors have studied a technique for obtaining and adjusting the professional knowledge from 90 cases of actual fatigue cracking, and constructed a system for selecting the reasonable retrofitting methods. Since the inference engine of the system has the learning ability, the system can be improved. While the inference engine is able to deal with a complicated network and to give flexible inference results, it produces neither secondary results nor value-added information.

In the present paper, the attention is paid to a technique of the qualitative reasoning: i.e. a model-based reasoning. Abovementioned inference engine is reconstructed using the model-based reasoning ability, and a structured knowledge model is generated by causality, If the engine and the structured knowledge model are used, the inference results including secondary knowledge and value-added knowledge may be obtained.

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