The morning started with sweet pastry and strong coffee at the Ayer Hotel at Plaça d’Espanya, followed by a short walk to the Hotel Fira Palace conference venue passing by the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, where the conference banquet would be held at the end of the day.
Wednesday’s program opened with a keynote by Anita Bestelmeyer, of BD, a global medical device manufacturer with over 29,000 employees and $7 billion annual revenue. BD’s corporate CAE group uses simulation based optimization to save millions of dollars, and create game-changing designs that deliver competitive advantage.
Anita spoke fondly of 20 years of Abaqus usage and shared memories of 15 prior conferences. Anita leads a small Corporate CAE team who perform structural and injection molding analysis and computational fluid dynamics. They also analyze thermoforming for simulation of blister packs which provide sterile barriers for medical products and use web enabled tools to share information with 600 collaborators across three business segments.
Anita’s group worked with SIMULIA to develop methods for many challenging new applications. She showed simulation results from a high impact burst of a container filled with thousands of beads, safely filling a receptacle with empty syringes, and “cutting edge” modeling of tissue penetration to determine peak insertion and drag forces on needles and lances.
Results were also presented from Abaqus/CFD for a fluid structure interaction simulation for blood collection studies on healthy vs. weak veins and a high pressure flow simulation.
There were 35 more customer presentations throughout the day and more complementary technology sessions. I attended the life sciences track where Markus Reiterer of Medtronic presented a study of surface cracks in shot peened titanium to understand the influence of residual stresses on the crack growth using J integral methods.
Yara Safi of RWTH Aachen University in Germany, one of Europe’s leading science and research institutions, presented an investigation of the failure behavior of a cranial implant-skull model.
Another highlight of the day was a general lecture on Isight by David Barnes who drew a compelling analogy between emerging automated simulation practices using Isight with the industrial revolution. The software is able to automate simulation processes creating what amounts to an automated assembly line for simulation.
Breaks between sessions provided networking opportunities with attendees and time to visit displays from 24 conference sponsors, who showcased complementary solutions while refreshments were enjoyed in the partner gallery.
The day wrapped up with an overview and demos of Abaqus 6.11 by Eric Weybrant and Asif Khan. Topology optimization and bi-directional capability added to the CATIA V5 Associative Interface were among the new features highlighted. New multiphysics capabilities include Smooth Particle Hydrodynamics and introduction of low frequency electromagnetic simulation. Performance enhancements include the support of GPGPU for Abaqus/Standard. A more detailed description of the Abaqus 6.11 release is available online.
All-in-all the second day of the SIMULIA conference exceeded my expectations and those of our partners and customers and I’m eagerly awaiting participating in day three.
Best,
Chuck.
Chuck Anastasia is a member of the SIMULIA Strategy & Marketing team based in Providence.
