Simulation-Driven Continuous Engineering: Enabling Innovation Throughout the Product Lifecycle

Recorded at CDFAM Computational Design Symposium, NYC 2024Presentation AbstractA digital model undergoes multiple transformations throughout the product lifecycle and relies on various mathematical models and computer representations. These include CAD or implicit representations during design, slices, and G-code during process planning, and CT scans during manufacturing inspection. The current simulation tools’ inability to directly work with these native representations, instead insisting on conversion to meshes, makes performance prediction cycles extremely slow, manual, and fragile. This severely limits the parameter space at each stage and hinders the computational design and engineering of innovative, high-performance products. Furthermore, it fragments the already siloed product lifecycle management (PLM) as different data formats cannot be easily integrated for holistic decision-making.Our solution to these challenges lies in continuous engineering through simulation on native representations. By employing immersed methods of moments and mesh-free simulation techniques, we ensure continuity across heterogeneous geometry and material models, throughout the design-to-manufacture process, and across arbitrary resolutions, solvers, and platforms. We have successfully demonstrated components of the continuous engineering platform by enabling, for example, performance simulation of as-planned and as-manufactured models, path-level additive process simulation, and virtual additive manufacturing (AM) part qualification. Additionally, we are developing *Generative.AM*, software technology for the generative design of pre-qualified AM components through a DARPA grant. Our commercial solutions today allow rapid exploration of large design spaces with extremely complex designs. By integrating with leading platforms like Synera, nTop, and Rhino Grasshopper as well as custom workflows such as those in Houdini, we empower users to seamlessly incorporate advanced simulations into their computational design processes, driving unprecedented innovation and efficiency.Speaker BioDr. Neel Goldy Kumar is a Product Manager and Engineer at Intact Solutions, Inc., where he leads the development of cutting-edge commercial simulation technologies. With a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, he has extensive expertise in modeling and simulation, particularly in high-complexity areas such as additive manufacturing and composites. Over his seven years at Intact, Dr. Kumar has helped pioneer the Immersed Method of Moments technology and has been a key contributor to multiple SBIR-funded projects. He has also served as Principal Investigator for a NIST SBIR on the virtual validation of complex heterogeneous components made using metal additive manufacturing. Currently, Dr. Kumar is spearheading the launch of Intact.Simulation software across various computational design platforms.CDFAM Computational Design Symposium series brings together leading experts in computational design from industry, academia and software development for two days of knowledge sharing and networking. Visit CDFAM.COM to learn about upcoming events around the world. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.designforam.com