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September 2008 |
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| Brad Heers, Automotive Lead, Dassault Systèmes What trends are affecting the way users use your software? Challenges of lower costs and improved reliability have created a need for increasingly accurate, complex, and realistic simulations – this demand has been a key driver for enhancements in the Abaqus FEA Software over the years. Today, product simulation is often being performed by engineering groups using niche simulation tools from different vendors to simulate various design attributes. The use of multiple vendor software products creates inefficiencies and increases costs. SIMULIA delivers a scalable suite of unified analysis products that allow all users, regardless of their simulation expertise or domain focus, to collaborate and seamlessly share simulation data and approved methods without loss of information fidelity. CAD integration with analysis helps streamline the process while Unified FEA helps reduce the number of analysis products being used during the development cycle. Are there any simple ways you see for automotive engineers to improve the intelligence of their development processes? Unified FEA is the use of a single unifying data model that can be used to drive the creation of simulation models for all three domains. Today, product development organizations are often comprised of separate engineering groups creating separate vehicle models – for instance, one for N&V, one for durability and strength, and one for crashworthiness. Often, the three groups use different simulation tools. This can lead to duplication of effort, which is costly and often out-of-sync with today’s demands for faster design approvals. Unified FEA allows our customers to combine the traditional Abaqus strengths in powertrain, tire, and component durability with the capabilities in system-level N&V, durability and strength, and crashworthiness. Unified FEA is able to lower the cost of simulation by providing a single simulation platform. It can also contribute to improved simulation accuracy due to the use of common technology across multiple domains. Ultimately, it enables engineers to gain significant benefits earlier in a vehicle’s design cycle. What’s holding your software’s ability back? Many software developers have tried to make simulation more accessible to designers and some have succeeded more than others - although – and this is an important point – not even close to the fullest extent of what is possible. Even today, simulation is often an afterthought in the minds of the CAD user. The vast majority of simulation that makes a difference to the design is still performed by “experts”. Why is that? Here are a few reasons which will guide our efforts in developing new products in the near future: 1) The user experience is too abstract. 2) The user interface is not a natural extension of the CAD environment. 3) The underlying technology used in today’s designer analysis products is too fragile and is not the same technology that is used by the “experts”. In addition, transfer of skills and methods from the experts to non-experts requires that they speak the same simulation “language”. Time and again, efforts to bring simulation to the design process (especially early in the design process) have failed because of lack of buy-in, guidance or management from the expert community. Our belief is that to avoid this and to succeed where past attempts have not, simulation tools for all types of users must be based upon one technology platform, but exposed to each type of user in the appropriate way. What are you doing to make the software more useful to engineers? With the significant growth in our realistic simulation technology, as well as in our automotive-related customer base, it is clear that our strategy of providing robust linear and nonlinear FEA for the entire vehicle development process—plus the tools to manage and secure the resulting IP—is resonating strongly within the industry. Our goal is to continue to meet regularly with our customers to understand their requirements and continue to build upon our unified product suite to meet the challenges that they face. One of the most striking breakthroughs that SIMULIA has developed and continues to rapidly evolve is the scalability of simulation on distributed memory, multi-CPU computing platforms for real and challenging engineering problems. In the past software developers have often claimed to deliver breakthroughs of this type and it is true that for CFD and certain dynamic simulations like automobile crashworthiness simulations, users have been used to running quite efficiently on multi-CPU parallel computing platforms for quite some time. However, the vast majority of CAE simulation done today is of a static or quasi-static nature and true parallel scalability has not been achievable until now. What does this mean for our customers? In a nutshell, it means that a simulation that used to take days can now be done in hours, what used to take hours now takes minutes. Further the hardware infrastructure necessary to realize these fast turnarounds is a fraction of the cost that has been previously expected, allowing enterprise customers to leverage larger resources and allowing more modest clients to realize analysis turnaround times that were previously beyond their budget. In practical terms this means that design decisions can be made more rapidly, or more design variations explored – which ultimately leads to simulation making more of an impact in the product development process. What is the next big step for your software? As a brand of Dassault Systèmes (DS), SIMULIA is leveraging existing DS technology available in ENOVIA to provide a solution for Simulation Lifecycle Management (SLM). SIMULIA SLM maximizes the value of company-generated IP through the capture, re-use, and deployment of simulation best practices for collaborative product development. The new release of SIMULIA SLM delivers unique capabilities to integrate and control the execution of simulation applications, carry out operations such as query and version control, administer access privileges, and perform and review simulations in a distributed, collaborative environment that provides significant value to our automotive customers. How do you see the software industry evolving in the next five years? The simulation market has witnessed a trend in consolidation but in more ways than simply the amalgamation of individual companies into larger entities. Customers are also consolidating their software tools in order to: 1. Reduce translation of data between applications. 2. Unify the approach to simulation so that multiple performance attributes are able to be studied within a single model. 3. Improve communication and collaboration between teams by incorporating approved simulation methods and sharing simulation data and results. 4. Be more efficient in training their engineers. Another trend is the expanding use of Nonlinear analysis technology and Multiphysics simulation. Engineers realize that to get closer to simulating real world behavior they need more sophisticated simulation technology and so they need more powerful simulation technology like nonlinear FEA and multiphysics. Nonlinear FEA includes important effects that were ignored or approximated in the past due to the limitations of linear analysis software and computing resources. Multiphysics allows the solution of multiple physics (like the structural-acoustic response of a tire, tire hydroplaning, or fluid-structure interaction in a pressure valve) to provide more accurate simulation results rather than analyzing the physics separately. Another significant trend is that the industry is acknowledging and responding to the need for Simulation Lifecycle Management solutions. The use of simulation technology and tools has been proven as an effective way for companies to drive innovation, ensure safety and product performance and to gain insight more efficiently and effectively than testing physical prototypes. However, the intellectual property generated in this activity is often simply “lost” or at least is not captured and therefore cannot be reused. In fact companies are spending millions on doing simulation but wasting much of the generated value. Companies are now starting to realize this and to understand that managing the data, methods, and design decisions that are an integral part of the simulation process will become a key competitive advantage. In other words, simulation is now ready to be managed within a defined lifecycle starting from conceptual simulation methods for product concepts through to re-using simulation data, know-how and simulation driven design decisions in subsequent product development cycles or in the future when existing product require additional simulations, refurbishment, recycling or disposal. Thus, the lifecycle of simulation IP exists in its own right as well as being a key component of the Product Lifecycle. |
LINKS Ansys: multi-physics analysis pays off. Read more... Integrated: Electromagnetic CAE tools that combine FEA and simulation. Read more... Lotus: vehicle dynamics made quick and easy. Read more...
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