By Michael Engelman, Enductive Solutions Inc.
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Nearly every enterprise realizes that it needs to bring higher-quality products to market faster to get an advantage over the competition. The goal is increased market share and higher profit margins. One way to achieve this goal is to replace the tried and true “build and test” approach to product design with the new Virtual Product Development (VPD) paradigm, which brings powerful computer aided engineering (CAE) simulation tools to bear on the design process to dramatically reduce the build and test cycle time. As these tools become increasingly important to design and manufacturing, and as CAE becomes more critical to the design process, limitations in their use are becoming apparent.
The Simulation Process and Data Management (SPDM) continuum
SPDM solutions manage task level to system level activities, and are enabled by a set of highly integrated processes, methods, and data
Even with recent advances in user interfaces, graphics, computing power, and automated features, complex engineering analysis using CAE tools still requires high levels of skill to realize the potential benefits. Experts in different physical disciplines are usually needed to perform each of the various analysis steps, the data generated in these steps is difficult to manage and analyze, and handing off results from one step to the next is complex and time consuming.
The result is that these technologies are typically used by large companies with the resources required to support an organization of highly-educated and experienced specialists. Even among such companies, the lack of integration between specialties and the large amount of effort required to set up each analysis often relegates the use of CFD and other high-end CAE tools to relatively late stages of the product development cycle. Furthermore, the expertise to effectively use these tools resides with a few expert analysts. The challenge is to capture this knowledge and expertise so that it can be more easily disseminated amongst a broader range of engineers within the company.
A new methodology, called Simulation Process and Data Management (SPDM), takes the next logical step by integrating the processes and data involved in engineering design. SPDM aims to simplify the use of powerful CAE technologies so that they are available to a wider group of companies for evaluating more designs more thoroughly at a much earlier stage in the design process as well as capture the knowledge and codify the process of CAE usage. Such an approach can deliver substantial improvements in product design and performance while reducing product development lead time and costs.
SPDM solutions can consist of either full design systems that integrate the entire product development process or custom interfaces that streamline one or more analysis steps involved in the design process. The SPDM continuum is such that a solution can vary from a vertical application (a glass-lined mixing tank analysis, for example) to a full-blown design system managing both the process and the data generated by simulations from multiple disciplines (underhood thermal management, for example). The focus or content of a solution can primarily be concerned with process or with data, or with any combination of the two. The articles on the pages that follow provide examples of different application solutions within the SPDM continuum.
Data mining techniques can be incorporated to allow both the detailed analysis of multiple simulation results and comparison with experimental results. SPDM solutions naturally integrate with broader product lifecycle management (PLM) systems already in place.
SPDM solutions can offer many advantages including: a secure web-based system that protects intellectual capital, a design environment that permits data mining and prevents reinventing the wheel, an embedded design process that assures consistency and the use of best practices, and integrated high-end CAE analyses that can be performed by non-experts. Essentially SPDM is a systematic approach and infrastructure for managing the process and data related to CAE simulation in a VPD environment.
As a systems integrator that specializes in the area of CAE process and data management and has strong relationships with all major CAE vendors, Enductive plays a central role as an implementer of SPDM solutions. Engineering solutions from Enductive increase the payback of CAE by providing the ability to extract more value from the results and integrate simulation within the entire design environment.
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