This paper on "Finite Element Process Simulation and Product Optimization" was presented at the NAFEMS World Congress on The Evolution of Product Simulation From Established Methods to Virtual Testing & Prototyping - 24-28 April 2001, The Grand Hotel, Lake Como, Italy.

Summary

This paper describes two directions that the authors regard the process of computational structural mechanics to be going in. Firstly; it is no longer sufficient to analyse a design by freezing a few crucial design environments and undertaking analysis on them in isolation. The object being designed should be subjected to a scripted "day in its life" when a whole series of events occur. Many of these events will be of a non-linear dynamic nature, simply because the structure may move in its real environment and the dynamical interactions with the environment need not be frozen for the purposes of analysis. Indeed such "freezing" may lose many important inertial loads on the structure. Although we only consider structural behavior in this work future process simulation will capture all the physical processes that the design is subject to. The second major direction is that of Product Optimization where optimization methods are part of the conceptual phase of product design, as well as for the manufacturing processes. With these computational tools the authors feel that designers may be able to consider all aspects of a product, structural performance, manufacturing costs and constraints, retirement costs at the conceptual design phase. Also this initial design process can be conducted with sufficient speed that the analysis being undertaken is concurrent with other aspects of the launch of a new product, such as marketing, finance and so on.