Blast furnace operation management method and apparatus

A method for management of an operation of a blast furnace comprising the steps of: (a) preparing a data base of information related to said furnace and a knowledge base including rules for diagnosing the state of said furnace; (b) gathering said information in a first interval; (c) adding said information to the data base; (d) inferring the state of the furnace using the data base and knowledge base in a second interval longer than said first interval; and characterised by (e) forecasting distribution in the furnace under various control condition combinations to aid deciding the optimum action comprising (i) preparing said combinations by inputting present conditions and variously altering at least one of them, (ii) calculating the distribution using a burden distribution estimation model considering collapse of a coke bed under said combinations; and (iii) outputting the calculation results. An apparatus for said blast furnace operation is further claimed. The method pref. also comprises (a) defining a number of physical state intermediate hypotheses and final diagnoses; (b) deciding first causative relations between the information and the hypotheses and second causative relations between said hypotheses and said diagnoses according to heuristic knowledge; (c) establishing a condition and a wt. (W) in each group of related information and a threshold in a related hypothesis regarding each first causative relation; (d) establishing a wt. (Y) in each hypothesis and a threshold (Z) in a related diagnosis regarding each second causative relation; and (e) storing rules including the causative relations, the conditions, the wts. and the thresholds into said knowledge base. The inference step comprises estimating each hypothesis and each diagnosis by summing said weights W and Y respectively, and comparing the sums with the related thresholds X and Z regarding each of the first and second causative relations respectively.