Improving isogeometric analysis post-processing for use in industry

The emerging field of isogeometric analysis promises to accelerate overall time to solution for a broad category of engineering simulations, including automotive crash, advanced manufacturing techniques, and nuclear energy simulation. While isogeometric analysis advances have been made in each area of the simulation process, including preprocessing, solving, and postprocessing, there does not exist an all-in-one solution where all of this functionality is combined into a single user interface. This has made IGA technology less accessible to the broader engineering community; most current users of isogeometric methods are experts. The company is a leader in developing isogeometric analysis technology, and previously enhanced the postprocessing software funded by the Advanced Scientific Computing Research Program to handle IGA output. In this SBIR, the company will integrate the postprocessing software with its isogeometric analysis software, creating the industry’s first all-in-one solution. The team has previously founded, grown, and exited a company in this space and is well prepared to bring the software to success. In Phase I, the postprocessing components will be integrated into the company’s software. Irrelevant components will be removed and functionality simplified to provide an improved and streamlined user experience for targeted engineering applications. In addition, support will be added for improved parallel handling of spline data in the postprocessing software, enabling more efficient isogeometric analysis visualization. The company will work closely with several customers and partners to focus its efforts on the most valuable workflows. In Phase II and beyond, the project will further develop this integration to enable a fully isogeometric workflow from preprocessing through analysis to postprocessing and visualization, leveraging the postprocessor’s parallelization capability and powerful feature set, and deepening its integration with the company’s software for a fully integrated solution. The comprehensive solution that results will expand the range of industrial applications for which predictive, cost-effective simulation analysis can be performed. This will provide significant savings of time and resources in the engineering design process, enabling higher quality, safer, more affordable production across diverse commercial and government sectors. In addition, the postprocessor integration will also provide value to dozens of legacy commercial and open-source finite element analysis solvers that rely on the companies for meshing.