Automation of Analysis Model Creation

Although numerical analysis applications have proven to be effective and reasonably accurate, the effort required to develop the associated analysis models remains a challenging and time consuming task. While many meshing tools are currently available, decomposing and manipulating the design geometry and enhancing the topology for mesh construction are manual processes and place the heaviest demands on time in the analysis process. The need to generate these models for different disciplines, each requiring different modeling abstraction and fidelity levels, further restricts the ability to use these analyses in the design process. Coupling these models across disciplines presents additional challenges since they often have different levels of abstraction and may not share the same geometry. This proposal focuses on the development of an environment for multidisciplinary analysis modeling and mesh generation. It employs an underlying object-oriented architecture with a common mesh infrastructure that facilitates rapid development of analysis model geometry. It integrates geometric reasoning, feature suppression, and dimension reduction methods to support automating the construction of analysis model geometry topology for mesh generation. Structured and unstructured meshes (1D/2D/3D) representing various levels of modeling fidelity for conceptual, preliminary, and detailed analyses and for different physical domains are supported. It enables the coupling of analysis models and design geometry and supports data interoperability among different analyses. The framework facilitates rapid development and automation of analysis modeling processes, facilitating rapid simulation for design validation and optimization of product performance at the earliest stage of the engineering process.BENEFITS: Substantial benefits would result for the DoD and DoE as a result of the development of the proposed environment. Successful development of this capability will reduce analysis modeling cycle time and impact engineering cost while enabling quick response to the fast-paced development of product designs and their analyses. Various government programs can benefit from a rapid analysis modeling framework to facilitate validation of conceptual designs through the use of high fidelity multidisciplinary analyses at the earliest stages of the engineering process. Such a system will have a great impact on various processes in the design-to-production automation of weapon systems, in addition to a number of applications in the marine, automotive, and aerospace industries. Based on TechnoSoft's experience with previous applications, it is projected that the adoption and deployment of this modeling framework will offer at least a 50% reduction in analysis model development time when starting a design from scratch, and more than 95% reduction when starting from a previous design where parametric studies are performed and only modest changes are made in the design intent. TechnoSoft plans to transition the proposed development into future releases of the AML framework for integrated design and analysis model process automation. This framework will support a collaborative design and analysis environment which will seamlessly integrate various tools and automate the analysis modeling and meshing processes from different disciplines.