NAFEMS Americas and Digital Engineering (DE) teamed up (once again) to present CAASE, the (now Virtual) Conference on Advancing Analysis & Simulation in Engineering, on June 16-18, 2020!

CAASE20 brought together the leading visionaries, developers, and practitioners of CAE-related technologies in an open forum, unlike any other, to share experiences, discuss relevant trends, discover common themes, and explore future issues, including:
-What is the future for engineering analysis and simulation?
-Where will it lead us in the next decade?
-How can designers and engineers realize its full potential?
What are the business, technological, and human enablers that will take past successful developments to new levels in the next ten years?

Resource Abstract

While simulation is inundating many engineering fields, the Heating, Ventilation

and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) industry has not reached the stage where

simulation is as ubiquitous as it could (or should) be. It is still very common to

implement the “build and test” process that is often extremely expensive. Over

the last 5 years, I have championed the comprehensive usage of CFD and FEA

at an HVAC firm that has not done much with simulation for decades.

The transformation at a “traditional” firm from “build and test” to leveraging

simulation can be divided into certain “regions” that can be followed by

Influencers to boost the change:



1) Introducing the concept of simulation to the most technical group within the

firm (usually the Research and Development group). This first step is to offer a

bird’s eye view without much in-depth detail so the group can ease their mind

into looking towards these technologies. Providing too much information here

can be overwhelming and can cause the subjects to “turn off” before even

attempting to work with these technologies.



2) After the subjects are beyond the stage of acknowledging the existence of

simulation technologies, we can move toward demonstrating the simulation for a

current application. It is beneficial to ask the subjects for an engineering problem

they are experiencing themselves. After the problem is presented, at this stage

all the technical “back-end” work should be done privately from the Influencer.

Only the results (with postprocessor graphics) need to be shown to the subjects.



3) At this point, the subjects should be intrigued and interested enough to invest

their own time in simulation. This is the time to have the subjects attend training

sessions with beginner FEA and CFD application courses. Upon a certain

degree of competence shown by at least a few of the subjects, it is proposed to

juxtapose a few different types of simulation packages to invest in.



4) After this stage is reached, there will be a chosen person or two that will invest

either nearly all their time in learning to use the simulation tool effectively. Initially

they might need physical testing to support their simulation results. Over time,

they will gain enough confidence in the simulation package and their abilities to

not require physical validation for each and every simulation. This is when the

payoff of using simulation seriously begins.



5) After reasonable experience, both the user and the firm will reap the benefits

of simulation. They will be able to design products faster with better quality. It will

also become easier to train newcomers to the team as there will be existing

members with experience. The company culture will have fully changed to

imbibe the benefits of simulation.



This presentation will go in detail regarding the transformation outlined above. As

someone who has gone through this process first hand, I am aware of the ins

and outs of company culture transitioning from physical prototyping to benefiting

from simulation. I would like to talk about this at the NAFEMS Conference

as I think others will benefit from this knowledge as well.