Leveraging ASCR libraries for commercial contact mechanics on trimmed spline geometry

Existing engineering simulation tools are failing to meet the growing need across industries for fast, efficient, and accurate analysis of product designs. These tools are unable to directly analyze computer-aided design model data, requiring onerous data conversion to make simulation possible. An additional burden is confronted for problems of analysis that involve contact, which are among the most critical and demanding applications of computational solid mechanics. This company has developed a technology based on isogeometric analysis that allows users to simulate directly on computer-aided design model data, but it needs further development for use in production. This project advances the development of next-generation isogeometric analysis tools that eliminate the traditional data conversion burden, with a particular emphasis on optimizing their performance for contact applications. With improved contact, automotive companies can use this next-generation software in production instead of just for small assemblies. These advanced, isogeometric analysis-based tools already enable exceptionally accurate simulation to be performed directly on complex design models, drastically reducing model-preparation costs. This project will leverage integrations of DOE-funded modular finite element and contact libraries to accelerate the performance of these advanced tools and to equip them with highly optimized contact mechanics capabilities. Phase I work will focus on improving the processing of boundaries derived from computer-aided design surfaces, improving formulations for immersed surface boundary conditions, exploring compatible iterative solver preconditioning techniques, and optimizing processes for parallel processing. Phase I will incorporate improved contact formulations from a DOE-funded code into the simulation software at issue in this proposal. Building on this groundwork, efforts in Phase II will target the extension of these approaches to enable the application of geometric multigrid methods to high-order contact. This will open the door to the development of robust, high-order, matrix-free contact mechanics methodology. Such an advance would transform contact simulation, making it possible for engineers to obtain simulation results for a wide range of problems that are currently impractical or impossible to simulate with existing technologies. This work will have a positive impact on the public as a whole and offer improved solutions and new capabilities to multiple industries and government agencies. While the products developed here will allow multiple industries to accurately produce and test models in significantly less time, the most significant long-term benefit to the public will be safer vehicles across the globe. Automotive manufacturers will be able to leverage improved simulation to optimize their designs for safety. Additionally, the parallelized, optimized code could also reduce the computational cost for crash simulation by an order of magnitude, freeing up those resources for other uses. The unique capabilities will allow simulation results to be reflected in improved designs in a way that current technology doesn’t permit. It will enable reduced time to market for new products, including autonomous vehicles. The tight integration between CAD and FEA that Coreform technology enables will break down many of the decades-old barriers between design and analysis, truly enabling the application of reliable simulation at any point in the design cycle, and allowing reduced time to market for many industries.