JPH05342005

PURPOSE:To facilitate the storage of knowledge for fault analysis by expressing know-how obtained by the expert of fault analysis in an extremely natural form, to release the expert from a fault classifying job and to transfer the technique of fault analysis knowledge to unskilled users. CONSTITUTION:In an expert system for fault analysis, set expression is used for the knowledge expression of a narrowing-down operation on the initial stage of fault analysis. Namely, a frame possessed from a rule data, base 15 is analyzed by an inference engine 14, and a set required for analyzing a verification expression described in the frame is generated by a set generator 11 and stored in a list storage memory 12. At a verification expression evaluator 13, the set is acquired from the list storage memory 12, the value of the memory corresponding to each element of the set is acquired from a memory damp file 17, and the verification expression is executed. Corresponding to the result of the verification expression, the frame to be next executed is selected and these operations are repeated.