BENCHMARK January 2015

Under the Sea - Vibration of a Curved Subsea Pipeline Due to Internal Slug Flow

In this Issue...

• Benchmark Challenge
  
• Simulation Governance: Managing Simulation as a Strategic Capability
  
• NAFEMS World Congress
  
• Yield Line Analysis of Reinforced Concrete Slabs: is the 10% Rule Safe?
  
• Engineering Simulation in the Cloud
  

The countdown is on to the 2015 NAFEMS World Congress in San Diego, from June 21st-24th this year.

Our call for abstracts closed in November, and the response has been phenomenal. 

Over 400 abstracts were submitted for the event, and with plans in place to hold a series of training courses, discussion sessions, workshops and specific forums on subjects such as Additive Manufacturing and 3D printing in Design and Engineering, the Congress is shaping up to be an unmissable event for everyone involved in simulation and analysis. And with the 2nd International Conference on SPDM running alongside, this truly is the event of the year. Full details on nafems.org/congress

This issue sees the 2nd installment of our new benchmark challenge series. The first challenge, launched in October, has seen a great response so far, and we’re delighted to see so many of you engage with the problem. Education and best practice are at the heart of NAFEMS’ mission, and initiatives like this are part of fulfilling that responsibility. And a lot of fun. We’ll be publishing more challenges in the coming months, with an iPad mini to be won in a draw from those submitting the highest number of correct answers, so it’s worth taking a look at!

As virtual product development becomes more and more common place, the role of simulation in this process becomes increasingly critical. Simulation governance and how to manage simulation as a strategic capability, is a topic which is now coming to maturity, and is of vital importance to everyone involved in engineering analysis and simulation. In his opinion piece on page 10, Dr. Keith Meintjes of CIM data—an internationally recognized authority on Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), proposes that simulation can be demonstrably superior to hardware-based test and development in a number of aspects.

It seems that “the cloud” has entered our vocabulary by the back door in recent years, much like many other buzzwords that come and go now and then. But this one appears to be here to stay, with many of us relying on cloud services in our day to day lives, both in and out of our jobs. But in terms of simulation and analysis, only a fraction of our work is currently done on the cloud, perhaps understandably given the resource and security requirements. The ‘Ubercloud CAE Experiment’, discussed on page 33 of this issue, is looking to change all that, by examining how we can access CAE in the cloud, and providing an online platform for engineers to discover, explore, and understand the end-to-end process of accessing and using CAE Clouds.

We also have article on the ‘yield-line technique’, which is the traditional method of determining the collapse load of reinforced concrete flat slabs and steel plates, as well as a look at the design challenges in for subsea pipelines in the oil and gas industry, which are being increasingly required to operate at higher levels of pressure and temperature and with processing facilities further away from the wellhead.

Enjoy this issue, and remember if you have any comments, thoughts, feedback or interesting article proposals, please get in touch at david.quinn@nafems.org