Engineering simulation is more and more widely adopted as a strategic tool for innovation, cost reduction and even addressing important environmental challenges. With an increasing number of companies using advanced simulation involving multiphysics to gain a reliable product-behavior prediction, we can see two major trends emerging: one related to advanced technologies and the future of simulation (robust design optimization) and the other, perhaps more pragmatic and definitely more business oriented, related to optimization of the product development process to amplify engineering.
Robust design optimization is quite straightforward and appears as the next holy grail for simulation: Companies want to make their products or processes insensitive to any variation of parameters, be it material properties, dimensions, operating conditions or even the environment in which the product operates. A product will be robust if it delivers expected optimized performances in any circumstance. This can be achieved by digitally optimizing the solution, taking into account any possible probabilistic or accidental variation. There is no effective way to ensure such product insensitivity using a traditional product design approach. Through efficient parametric study, possibly probabilistic input variation, engineering simulation opens the door to efficient robust design.
With the ongoing large-scale deployment of simulation, some companies are coming up short in engineering resources; others feel that their current resources could be used more efficiently to involve simulation more systematically, more pervasively, without massive additional investment in human resources. The trend is, therefore, to look for optimizing the product development process, to use the results and investments made in simulation in a smarter way so that more could be done with less. This management issue calls for sharing and customizing the best practices from best-in-class companies, making it possible to amplify the value of the existing engineering workforce.
Synergies in these two areas lead to a third important trend: systems engineering. This involves moving beyond localized areas of design and simulating the system as a whole. Early in the development cycle, our software can help cross-functional engineering organization predict system-level performance, then work on improvements in individual components or subsystems, as well as their interactions with one another. The entire product system can be continuously and rapidly fine-tuned in a virtual environment until it is ready for physical assembly and testing. The end result is an accelerated development process and increased confidence in ultimate performance when products are launched.
