The International Association for the Engineering Analysis Community (NAFEMS) Americas conference is coming soon—and the vendor-agnostic event promises to give engineers the knowledge they need to successfully model their designs and navigate industry trends.
To that end, here is a list of simulation trend presentations you can’t miss at the NAFEMS conference.
ASSESS Initiative Update: Addressing the Changing Role of Simulation
One of the biggest issues to be discussed will be the disconnect between the growing need of CAE tools and the lack of expertise available to use the software effectively.
“This results in a dilemma where we cannot meet the demand for expertise needed to support the coming explosion in demand unless we make some significant changes,” wrote Walsh. “The ASSESS Initiative was formed to address the changing role of simulation. ASSESS is a broad reaching multi-industry initiative that began with the goal to expand the use and benefit of software tools for model-based analysis, simulation and systems engineering.”
While at NAFEMS, Walsh will review many of these simulation industry issues and provide an update of how ASSESS has been working to address them.
The Case for Regulatory Grade Computer Modeling and Simulation
Bidirectional Cavopulmonary Anastomosis (BCPA) surgery simulation. Modeling human organs key to expedite medical device approval. (Image courtesy of ANSYS.)
Medical devices have to go through rigorous testing before they are considered safe for human use. Bardot’s goal is to use computational modeling and simulation during the design cycle of a medical device.
By proving the validity of simulations, engineers could potential reduce the time-to-market of their medical devices and expedite the regulation process.
However, many challenges stand in the way of this trend such as standardizing the simulation validation process and the modeling of human organs to reduce the need of animal and human benchmarks. In Bardot’s presentation, she will discuss how this future might come into reality and how it will affect organizations like the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry.
CAE and Simulation: Be Prepared for Major Shifts in the Market and Engineers’ Priorities
(Image courtesy of Mark Halpern.)
First, engineers will need to look to predictive analytics software to help guide their operations, product designs, structures and systems.
“I am seeing new [predictive analytics] tools and initiatives evolving to take simulation data,” said Halpern. “[These tools] extract new insights and knowledge about the physical behavior of systems.”
Next, Halpern will also discuss how trends such as smart products, sustainability, multidisciplinary designs and increasing regulations put a strain on the development cycle. To alleviate this strain, design teams will have a stronger reliance on simulation and CAE technologies.
“The complexity of the designs means complex physical behaviors that would be impossible to understand without CAE,” added Halpern. “However, the complexity introduces higher risk of simulation results that can be misleading due to either faulty assumptions or modeling errors. We need to get smarter with CAE software.”
Finally, engineers will learn more about the vendor trend towards offering CAE tools over the cloud and how this might affect decisions about IT policies, licenses and high-performance computing (HPC) hardware choices.
“The pay-as-you-go cloud usage models are attractive for small- to medium-sized companies with sufficiently skilled CAE users,” said Halpern. “It somewhat levels the playing field with larger companies. Throughput can also be much faster with multiple processors available for robust design activities where multiple analyses can be run simultaneously in the cloud.”
To learn about some NAFEMS training you can take, follow this link.