What happens to your 3D design – your product – when exposed to its environment and realistic physical conditions?

Like in a virtual laboratory you can observe its behavior under changing conditions. How does the integrity of my design change if I apply forces at various positions, modify materials and add stability support? How is my 3D design interacting with other objects, solids, liquids, gases, static or dynamic? How does it withstand … strong wind?

Don’t be afraid if this sounds to you like the 80’s one-hit wonder “She blinded me with science” (I have embedded the flash back clip below for the ones who missed this). I’m not an inside expert myself, but wanted to use today’s post to introduce you to the possibilities proposed by this PLM domain called Realistic Simulation. You are invited to find out what this is about and what a realistic simulation can do for you eventually.

Here are typical questions addressed by Realistic Simulation within a PLM environment:

• Does this phone withstand a drop test from 2 m height onto the concrete floor ?
• Does this tire profile keep the car on wet roads ?
• Do these restraint and airbag systems ensure car passengers’ safety ?
• Is this car seat comfortable, yet safe?
• Does this new heart pump keeps blood flowing to the patient’s heart ?

Take a look at different simulation scenarios that are being performed across industries to improve understanding of physical performance of products – such as a car in a virtual crash test and even exercising the human body.

There are more examples you can surf on 3D Perspectives’ YouTube channel.

As a designer you might say: “That’s great, but I leave testing and simulation to my specialized department of engineers. I will focus on the design”.

Traditionally this used to be the way how it worked: Designers gave their designs to Simulation Experts, they did the calculations and filed back a report which told the designer if the product was good to go … or not.

With today’s simulation software becoming more easy-to-use and integrated with the design desktop this has changed as the designer herself has the power to perform initial testing, to tweak parameters and design details in order to optimize her design. And by doing so she is preparing more detailed simulation requests which still have to be handled by the expert engineer, in order to finalize the design optimization, in a much more collaborative manner between the two.

Responding to the manufacturing industry’s simulation requests and providing the tools in a PLM context is the mission of the SIMULIA brand at Dassault Systèmes. Driven by the scientific nature and physics required to analyze realistic behavior of products , the outspoken high “brain density” at the SIMULIA team refers to the percentage of advanced science and engineering degrees. This is not only true in the development team, but also in the Sales and Support teams who are closest to the customers’ everyday engineering and simulation challenges.

Based on a strong background of mechanical and nonlinear structural analysis with the Abaqus finite element analysis (FEA) product suite, SIMULIA today offers a complete virtual environment for testing life experience by providing broad range of multiphysics capabilities. This means that SIMULIA’s realistic simulation solutions handle more and more environmental parameters to mimic real life conditions.

Our Solution Partners also play an important role in this, as they add their very specialized and sophisticated capabilities within an open platform to address customers’ simulation challenges.

Are you up for an example?

Let’s look at one specific simulation domain which is called computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and where our partner CD-adapco has been hatching very specific know-how and experience. I am here at the CD-adapco User Conference held in London with about 250 participants of the CD-adapco ecosystem. Among them representatives from across all product manufacturing industries, who are presenting how CFD helps them in their product generation processes, e.g. optimizing the engineering of a wind park for energy generation while minimizing environmental impact, or simulating artificial cloud formation in gigantic greenhouses in Singapore. There seem to be no limits of imagination and creativity.

SIMULIA and CD-adapco have developed a close cooperation around the “fluid-structure-interaction” which allows their software codes to work in concert. For the one’s who want to dive in more here is the recommended reading.

You are still there? Congratulation for your persistence and desire to know more about this fascinating domain. Enjoy one of the many CFD examples from CD-adapco below.

Have a nice day. I’ll talk to you soon.

Michael

More of these on 3D Perspectives’ YouTube channel.