This presentation was delivered at the NAFEMS UK Seminar "Efficient Preparation of Quality Simulation Models" held on the 18th of October 2017

Simulation methods based on FEA and CFD methods are routinely used in industry to support design of new products and to understand the performance of existing products. These methods have now been developed to a level where they can provide robust analysis data to verify design solutions and meaningful information to gain an engineering understanding of the likely performance of a product even before manufacture.

Although simulation methods are used effectively in industry, their application could be extended if the time and cost to create simulation models could be reduced significantly. Today, the time and cost associated with creating simulation models often prevents their wider use and alternative analysis methods are used instead including costly and time consuming testing to support new product developments.

Meshing, property assignment and model assembly processes therefore still represent a challenging bottleneck that has to be resolved by software vendors and industry to enable the full potential of simulation methods to drive down cost and lead time for development of new products.