CFD for Design Engineers: Dissecting the Results
Setting up simulation jobs that accurately reproduce real-world phenomenons — how an engine heats up during operation or how fluid flows inside a catheter — takes skill and experience. So is interpreting the FEA (finite element analysis) results. The second phase is crucial in making intelligent deductions about how to improve the design.
About a month ago, with ANSYS‘ help, I put together a video covering the basic setup of a CFD job. For simplicity, ANSYS’ senior product manager Gilles Eggenspieler and I decided to focus on a very straightforward scenario: the water pressure inside a valve during close and open operations. The valve is installed at an angle, making it difficult to foresee the water’s behavior or pressure. Continue reading
DE Writer Tony Abbey, Taking Your Simulation Questions on Thursday March 7
DE‘s contributing editor Tony Abbey, a recognized finite element analysis (FEA) trainer in NAFEM‘s classrooms and online courses, is planning to field your questions in a webinar titled “FEA for Managers & Reviewers: Ask Tony” (March 7).
So I took advantage of our editorial affiliation to toss him a question that’s been on my mind: How would you distinguish the terms “simulation” and “analysis”? Are they synonymous? Continue reading
CyDesign on Cloud: Pay as You Go, but not SaaS.
People who are involved in DARPA’s FANG (fast adaptable next-generation ground) vehicle design program may not realize they’re interacting with a component supplied by a start-up based in Palo Alto, California. Embedded inside META, the web-hosted software accessible to all FANG participants free of charge, is the technology from CyDesign, a company founded by Serdar Uckun. Formerly a principal scientist at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and technical area lead at NASA Ames Research Center, Uckun has extensive experience in system engineering and complex system design. About a year go, Uckun decided to create a commercial version of the software he developed. So he set up shop about five miles away from Stanford University and lunched CyDesign. The new company’s product, CyDesign Studio, is gearing up for public release in summer 2013. Continue reading
Michael Grieves: The Pursuit of Perfection Begins in the Virtual World
“It’s easier to move pixels than to move atoms around,” noted Michael Grieves, author of Virtually Perfect: Driving Innovative and Lean Products through Product Lifecycle Management. In other words, perfecting a product is easier done in the virtual world than the physical world.
“My ideal [design environment] is where I digitally design the product, digitally test it, digitally manufacture it, digitally figure out the support activities–and only when I get it right do I actually go out and bend some metal,” he said. Manufacturers didn’t have that option before because, he observed, “The ability to use computers to mirror the physical world and simulate physical things in the virtual world is a relatively new phenomena … 3D models became robust enough for simulation only in the last decade or so.” Continue reading
Leave a comment
MSC Software Geared Up with New Toolkit
Here’s one news item that nearly got lost in the holiday rush. Last Christmas, just as we were elbowing our ways through department stores, MSC Software slipped a plug-in into the market. Adams Gear Advanced Technology, a tool kit that works with MSC’s mechanical simulation software MD Adams, lets you conduct customized gear simulations for:
- transmission systems; and
- gears and bearings.
Transmission simulation may be used for machinery, automotive, aerospace, medical product, wind turbine, and consumer product design. In the announcement, MSC Software wrote, “Traditional transmission design procedures often rely only on static design studies. It is widely known that these design procedures alone are not meeting the demands of modern virtual prototyping. Decoupling system dynamics from transmission dynamics carries potential design risks, which will most likely lead to higher development costs and longer development times. Therefore, accurate prediction of system dynamics is a common prerequisite for robust system engineering and reliable component dimensioning.”
According to MSC, the tool kit provides analysis functions for
- straight, helical, internal and external gears;
- distributed contact in tooth shape (straight or helical), micro corrections, wheel distance, and misalignment within flexible and interactive components.
The software lets you export data as animation files to help you evaluate your transmission and gear setups.
