New models of smartphones, computers, laptops, tablets, wearables, game consoles, VR & AR devices, speakers and headphones, and TV sets are released at full speed, stiff competition putting high pressure on manufacturers. And it’s not giving any signs of slowing down; the rising demand for smartphones, artificial intelligence, and voice recognition technology will perpetuate and enhance this growth, demanding, at the same time, lower prices and shorter time to market for electronics companies to stay competitive.

While consumer electronics might take the lion’s share, general electronics, telecommunications, and electric systems are also experiencing significant growth, partly supported by the emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, data mining, and smart cities.

All of this growth in the electronics industry requires performant R&D departments, efficient design processes, and large budgets to develop competitive products, at competitive prices, in a highly competitive industry. And still, none of that matters if it doesn’t also include a competitive time to market (TTM).

So what do electronics companies need to know about optimizing their development process in such a dynamic market? Here are 7 ways to accelerate time to market and boost efficiency.

1. Identify the Top Features for Product Differentiation Within the Electronics Industry

You might be keen on accelerating time to market as much as possible, but the first step in your product planning stage is determining the five core features of your product that will differentiate it from the competition but also your previously released products. This should be done based on research studies that analyze consumers’ needs and preferences. If you think you have your product’s highest added-value features that will revolutionize the electronics industry, organize focus groups and validate your design. 

The history of the electronics industry is full of fails; remember HTC’s ChaCha and Salsa phones that had a Facebook button integrated? In hindsight, it could have come in handy, but the world was simply not ready for it.

2. Document the Product Development Process

Having a documented product development process for electronic components or products is essential in ensuring that your team works as efficiently as possible and is informed at all times about the project’s status. 

Moreover, without thoroughly defined steps, any estimation of the time for project completion will be highly inaccurate. Process mapping enables electronics companies to allocate resources properly, set deadlines, and have time management in check through schedules. 

Using dedicated project management software will enable team leaders to assign tasks and keep track of progress. This will prevent inefficiencies caused by miscommunication, delays in knowledge sharing, lack of ownership, or making uninformed decisions. While having a thought-through plan is crucial, documenting the changes, feedback, and extra steps that emerge is also important, as the process evolves with each product development cycle and learning might be derived each time.

3. Clearly Define Roles in the Team

Firstly, in business, democracies don’t work. Each project needs a responsible person for leading it, from beginning to end. Sharing ideas and know-how within the team is essential, but in the end, you’ll need one person to take the final decisions and ensure project delivery. 

Secondly, each team member needs a defined role in the organizational structure. When work ownership is ambiguous and responsibilities are unclear within a team, issues can remain unsolved and mistakes are more prone to occur, causing delays on rework later in the product development process. 

4. Institutionalize Project-Related Learning

Once you document your product development process, engineers involved will identify many learnings, product knowledge, and improvement opportunities, especially in the virtual testing and physical prototyping phases. 

In the electronics industry, with teams dedicated to meeting aggressive deadlines, documenting and distributing such lessons is considered a low priority when in fact, it is one of the most essential steps in reducing time to market at an organizational level. Maybe the singular project will lose some time creating a repository, but documenting project-related learning will prevent future mistakes in dozens of other projects, avoiding the situation of different teams reaching the same conclusions over and over again, trapped in a loop of lessons never communicated across the company. 

Yet, not only documenting is important, but also having a centralized database for files and materials that all team members involved can access. Storing anything relevant on local computers should be discouraged. 

5. Avoid Design Rework

In the race of bringing a product to market, the planning of a project can have unrealistic deadlines, putting a lot of pressure on the team members. This often results in shortening the testing phase, with engineers creating too few (or sometimes only one) physical prototypes and neglecting to apply improvement changes or even failing to predict problems under different scenarios. Often this leads to design rework once the issues are uncovered, creating overload for the engineer closer to the launch date. 

Other times, companies in the electronics industry send the design to manufacturing and release it even though it is not as mature as it should be or didn’t undergo enough testing. And that is a mistake that even the big players know well; I’m sure that Samsung knows a thing or two about this; we all remember the long thread of pictures in 2016 with Galaxy Note 7 catching fire or even exploding that forced airlines to ban the devices on their planes.

Actually, what happened with the tablet was that the battery was overheating in some circumstances with not enough room in its casing to expand. This immense business failure and brand reputation damage could have been avoided with a more thorough testing process, thermal management studies in particular. 

Failure to adhere to operational temperature limits can result in component overheating, system failure, and—by far the worst of all—life-threatening risks. I still remember meeting a joyful boy in a children’s hospital 10 years ago who had burn scars all over his hands. When I asked him what happened to him, he replied “I was watching TV at home one day and well… it exploded”. 

It is not to say that these electronics companies didn’t perform testing. But analyzing hundreds or thousands of scenarios for multiple design versions with physical prototyping is simply not feasible. This is why engineering simulation (CAE) software is used in most electronics design processes, to complement physical testing with virtual analysis. CAE is meant to be employed early in the design process, in order to predict potential failures and make improvements from the start based on the results of the numerical analyses. With cloud-based CAE in particular, all of these scenarios and multiple design versions can be investigated in parallel, supporting a high-paced, iterative design process.

Case Study: Preventing Thermal Damage in Electronics

Let’s take the example of this engineering project directed by David McCall, Senior Mechanical Engineer at QRC Technologies, whose goal was to design enclosures for RF testing equipment that measure cellular band signals and optimize heat dissipation.

When relying on passive cooling, RF testing tools overheat—reaching up to 50 °C (122 °F). This became a problem to address for QRC’s engineers when they relied on rule-of-thumb engineering to cool hard drives. While the CPU was operating within limits, using only thermal pads between the hard drives and the boards proved to be insufficient. The controller chip was hitting the physical limit and was shutting down as a defensive strategy to prevent damage. In the pursuit of finding a cooling system suitable for these specific conditions, tested four design iterations with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis, reaching a final version within a week. 

For the casing, the engineers used heat sinks with copper slugs and graphite to give hard drives a heat path out to the enclosure. The materials were chosen due to their high thermal conductivity, especially for thinner pieces, enabling radiation. The aim was to ensure heat could travel to the outer casing easier than it could travel through the air, and the enclosure would release heat outside of the device.

The final task was to ensure that the casing had sufficient surface area and an extra fan blowing onto it or get a case to radiate the heat out into the environment. Before creating any physical prototypes, thermal simulations were performed to see if the chip would overheat or even break. The results helped optimize heat dissipation and reach a final design. 

QRC’s engineers went with the SimScale cloud-based CAE platform because it did not lock up resources locally. Another reason was cost; as a SaaS solution, the platform only has a yearly subscription fee and does not require any special hardware or software licenses.

“It was also a lot more cost-effective as opposed to getting a seat and having it sit there for three to four months. We are a small company and might use a simulation for two solid weeks every six months—you can’t borrow that from a friend”, said David McCall. 

In the end, QRC Technologies saved 4-6 additional weeks by integrating cloud-based simulation in their design process, which contributed as well to a shorter time to market. This project was discussed in more detail in this article by Engineering.com.

To learn more about how to tackle overheating in electronics and test products early in the development process with thermal simulation, refer to the article Electronics Cooling Project: LED Spotlight. 

6. Onboard New Engineers Before Assigning Them a Project

In most companies that employ engineers—and electronics is no exception—new employees receive little onboarding. They are rather involved in a project from week one, leaving virtually no time to go through training material, understand the organization, and get familiarized with the project’s wider context. No matter how much experience one has in their field, in order to make the best use of their skills, employees need to first understand the company, industry, and organizational know-how (including the lessons learned from previous projects mentioned earlier).

7. Enable Collaboration to Accelerate Time to Market

In any product development process, leadership, design engineers, project managers, contractors, and manufacturing responsibles need to communicate on an ongoing basis. As obvious as the need is, however, in practice it is a serious challenge; especially with globally dispersed development teams. And this is often the case for large electronics companies that have the design team in one country and manufacturing possibly across an ocean. Furthermore, in a world that becomes more digitized by the day and remote workplaces are emerging, collaboration becomes top priority. Any failure in ensuring it can hinder progress and prolong time to market.

In the product development process, it is important to encourage collaboration within the design team as well as among teams to enable wide information dissemination. Constant communication is key, don’t wait for meetings, keep the ball rolling. Here are a few things to consider:

• Adopt an efficient communication model with tools that promote collaboration. Your task management systems (e.g., Asana, Jira, Trello, Todoist, Samepage, etc. need to be integrated). You will also need to make use of communication platforms (e.g., Slack, email). 

• Consider cloud-based solutions for engineering software, as they offer collaboration features that allow team members to work together on the same projects. Onshape, for example, allows users to create computer-aided design (CAD) models online, end-to-end. The same benefits are granted for engineering simulation technology (CAE) through SimScale. Actually, SimScale has recently released enhanced collaboration features and a multi-user licensing package to support design and engineering teams with multiple people who use simulation. With these features made possible through cloud computing, teams can save time, organize tasks, scale their simulation expertise, and have broader visibility and control within their projects. You can read more in this article: SimScale Announces Cloud-Based Collaboration Features.

• Keep track of the steps and involve the team in giving status updates on a regular basis.

• Ensure that feedback loops take place often, not only from the project manager but also among peers.

• Remember that collaboration and teamwork are essential to accelerate time to market, but you can’t decide as a team; you’ll still need a single, empowered decision-maker with ownership over key aspects of the project.

Conclusion

Getting to market faster than the competition enables electronics companies to capture market share. Shorter time to market should not mean, however, quality compromise; there are no shortcuts, just better process optimization. Each of the tips described in this article should prove to be helpful in keeping this balance between accelerating time to market and delivering high quality, innovative electronics products.

Keep in mind that every time waste will cause a delay and each improvement will be a gain. In the end, when time wastes are reduced to a minimum and all steps for higher efficiency are taken, electronics companies will be able to accelerate time to market and get the desired results.

The post 7 Ways to Accelerate Time to Market in the Global Electronics Industry appeared first on SimScale.

Despite the wide range of simulation features and highly developed technology, on-premises CAE software is accompanied by several barriers that have prevented the technology’s widespread adoption for the past decades. These barriers are related to poor accessibility, steep costs due to hardware investment and software licenses, high expertise required to use the tool itself, and—a more recent need—lack of collaboration options. 

Cloud solutions and cloud-based simulation providers are leading the democratization of CAE, bringing to market solutions that run in a web browser from any PC or laptop, have a relatively easy-to-use interface, and allow users to work together on the same project, in real-time.

In short, these are the main benefits of simulation in the cloud:

• Access the simulation tool and your CFD or FEA projects from anywhere, anytime
• Cut down hardware requirements and investment, a standard laptop/PC will suffice
• Share simulation projects and collaborate with colleagues
• Use the CAE platform for live discussions instead of creating slides and presenting to clients, managers or colleagues
• Run complex simulations with parallel computing
• Live support (chat function), with a response time often under 5 minutes during business hours (well, that’s our achievement at SimScale, we cannot tell for other providers)
• Work from home (or Bali) anytime

If you have already decided to migrate to the SimScale cloud solution for CAE, the following steps and information might be of use in helping you have a seamless migration.

This paper addresses the difference between on-premises software and SaaS
solutions for computer-aided engineering, explaining how SaaS came to be and its
key benefits.

Download White Paper

Tips for Migrating From On-Premises CAE Software to a Cloud Solution

1. Purchase the plan that suits you best (yearly subscription, pricing is based on your needs). 

2. Create an account online, no installation, just a standard sign-up like all modern software. 

3. Get onboarded with the learning materials that the SimScale team sends you, and with tutorials and user guides you can discover autonomously.

4. Copy a simulation project (from the public library) and use it as a template to familiarize yourself with the platform. Public projects are free, they do not use up the core hours from your paid plan. Pay attention to the type of projects you create (private or public) depending on the purpose (learning/playing around versus work projects; for the latter, you should always create private projects to protect your geometry and results).

5. Name your files and simulations. This is very important when importing and creating data in the cloud; you will rapidly end up with 20 different designs in 20 different simulation setups which themselves have multiple runs.

6. Plan your time wisely. With cloud-based tools, you are not restricted by computational power; it is not uncommon to run meshes of 10M to 20M cells for a few hours and obtain converged, and accurate results. Our users and team members usually start the runs before going to bed and close the laptop. They then post-process the results in the morning.

7. On most standard CAD packages, when you create configurations (sometimes called families of parts for one design), you can batch export all the configurations in either the native format or a neutral file format (STEP, IGES, Parasolid, etc.).

8. Run as many simulations in parallel as you need to compare different designs under the same conditions.

9. Run as many simulations in parallel as you need to compare the performance of one design under different conditions.

10. There are no restrictions in terms of data storage or a number of simulations within a single cloud-based simulation project. You can duplicate a simulation setup and reutilize it as many times as you need for other designs, like a template. 

11. Similarly, you can run as many meshing jobs as you need, this turns out to be very useful when performing a mesh independence study. 

12. No need to schedule maintenance for software updates. No need to schedule regular hardware upgrades. Everything is taken care of in the background, by the cloud-based simulation software provider. This means users see the latest version of the platform at all times.

13. Within the platform, you have an option to instantly connect with one of our support engineers, they can even edit your project directly if you allow them to.

These were some of the steps and tips that we think are useful to know. The endeavor of migrating to a new solution, especially one that is deployed differently, certainly raises more questions. So here are the answers to some that you might have.

How Will I Access Old Data After the Migration?

Moving to a cloud solution means you don’t need to store simulation data (3D models, specification files, result files, etc.) locally. This being said, you might still need to access your old simulation data, when comparing runs and retrieving old simulations of designs. Organizing these archives is an essential part of the migration process, as the data should be easily accessible, readable, and comparable with online results. Think of your old files like an outdated Rolodex. Now you just need to digitize it, and away you go, to the cloud!

How Will I Know Results Are Consistent with the Old Software?

You’ll need testing time. Comparisons between the traditional, on-premises CAE solution and the cloud-based platform should be taking place for additional validation and to ensure your results are converging. Some tests and potential adjustments need to be performed so that the transition is as smooth as possible for the end user.

How to Train on the New Software?

The end user should be fully familiar with the new interface, workflow, and settings of the cloud-based tool. This means that some time should be allocated for training sessions with specific and relevant material to cover your particular industry. This way, your engineering team can be up and running as soon as possible, while already knowing how to get from A (CAD upload) to B (interpreting data/results), and shortening time to delivery on even the first project. Also, you should leverage the support services that SimScale offers.

Will I Need My Old Machines with Simulation in the Cloud? 

Migrating a workflow to a cloud solution comes with the benefit that dedicated high-performance hardware is no longer required. You can feel the weight of heavy equipment being lifted off your shoulders, and more literally, off your desk. Of course, it depends if other software solutions, for CAD, rendering or CAE are used, as these will still require onsite computational resources.

No longer can engineering teams be bound by project silos, time zones, or physical locations to meet demanding deadlines. So how can engineers use this to their advantage?

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Will the New Workflow Help or Hinder the Design Process?

Evaluate your new workflow by analyzing every step of the process; how are the original 3D CAD models created? Are multiple configurations of a design exported from a standard CAD package? How are they stored before being uploaded to the cloud? Will the current naming convention used for the online projects work? It can also be important to establish some project templates if the workflow, product to be simulated or type of analyses are often reused.

Conclusion

For this article, we asked our application engineers to share their input and advice for a seamless migration. Along with useful tips, some also shared their experience. If you remain undecided about migrating to the cloud, here is what a fellow engineer had to say after one year and a half working with a cloud-based simulation tool.

“These were my biggest problems when I was using simulation at home. Firstly, my laptop is a workstation but still has limited hardware. I had to deal with software and hardware issues (cooling, software crash, overall maintenance). Secondly, my laptop’s hardware was limiting me to use large meshes. In industrial applications, we need a good and detailed mesh. You cannot even start a simulation because the laptop does not generate the required mesh density. Third, when I did manage to create a mesh, the simulation was very slow. It takes days to converge simple cases. And lastly, if I was unsure whether my simulation strategy or settings are right, there was no one to ask for assistance. With cloud-based simulation, one can free their PC for local processing and move towards truly scalable simulation.”

– Mehmet Özcan, CFD Application Engineer at SimScale

If you have already decided to make the move to the cloud, welcome! We hope these tips will help to ease any transition woes. Rest assured, the SimScale support team is available nearly around the clock, in two separate time zones, if you do in fact need support. Yet don’t just take our word for it, online reviews from our customers always mention how helpful our application engineers are, along with nearly every case study we have on our customers’ page. We have to admit, we’re all quite proud of them. 

This is it! Let the migration to the cloud begin. It might not be very easy to move to a new solution, but once done, cloud-based simulation will provide an entire new universe to explore. We’ll be with you for the ride!

The post Simulation in the Cloud: Tips for a Seamless Migration appeared first on SimScale.

But first, a short story. You’ll see, you won’t be disappointed. 

The year was 1902, the world had just stepped through the threshold into the new millennium, and 18 years before prohibition, New York was starting to test the boundaries of civil engineering with its skyscrapers—the innovative buildings that would dramatically alter the face of the city to what we know it to be today. 

Technically, New York’s first skyscraper was The Tower Building in 1889; this status was not given so much for its height—of 11 stories—but for being the first building in the city to have a steel skeleton. Unfortunately we can now only see it in old pictures, as it was demolished in 1913. But our story starts with 1902, the year the next iconic skyscraper—which is still standing tall despite adversities of all kinds—was opened: the unmistakable Flatiron Building.

Located on 23rd Street at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway, the Flatiron Building had to withstand great social opprobrium, despite the commonly accepted idea that its engineering cleverness was outstanding. The Municipal Art Society declared it “unfit to be in the Center of the City”, The New York Tribune described it as “A stingy piece of pie… the greatest inanimate troublemaker in New York”, and The New York Times said it was a “monstrosity.” [1]

But the criticism didn’t stop at aesthetics. When the building proved to cause such strong wind gusts that they would lift the skirts of women passing by, its bad reputation only grew stronger; this time with a touch of humor to it. 

“One vast horror, facing Madison Square, is distinctly responsible for a new form of hurricane, which meets unsuspecting pedestrians as they reach the corner, causing them extreme discomfort. I suppose the wind is in some way intercepted by the towering height of the building, and forced down with fury into an unaccustomed channel. When its effects first became noticeable, a little rude crowd of loafers … used to congregate upon the curb to jeer at and gloat over the distress of ladies whose skirts were blown into their eyes as they rounded the treacherous corner. Hanging about this particular spot soon became a recognised and punishable offence, and anyone loitering there more than a few moments is now promptly “moved on” by the police. A lawsuit is also at this moment pending against the owner of this building, brought by a neighbouring tradesman whose shop-window has twice been blown in by the newly created whirlwind.” – Sir Phillip Burne-Jones, 1904 [2]

New Yorkers even placed bets on how far the debris would fly when the wind knocked it down. This was referred to as “Burnham’s Folly,” named after the building’s architect, Daniel Burnham. Thanks to the steel bracing designed by engineer Corydon Purdy, however, the Flatiron building was here to stay, being able to withstand four times the typical wind loads in the area.

While the building itself is safe, sometimes, when the wind blows from the North, not the same can be said about pedestrians. Due to its shape, as it can be seen in the simulation below, wind currents from the leading edge of the building move up and down in a vortex pattern. 

Nowadays a landmark quite loved by New Yorkers, the Flatiron Building stands proof of how important pedestrian wind comfort studies are in civil engineering. And fortunately, it is a new millennium, with plenty of technologies to help ensure it.

So What Is Pedestrian Wind Comfort?

In short, pedestrian wind comfort is the branch of wind engineering dedicated to studying wind effects of the comfort and safety of pedestrians and cyclists—what causes them, how they develop, and how the urban environment can be designed to control them. To fully understand the concept, however, we need to dive a little deeper.

The construction of any building inevitably changes the microclimate in its vicinity; the changes become dramatic, however, when it comes to skyscrapers. What happens is that the wind pushes against the surface of a skyscraper creating vortices and vortex shedding, which can cause the building to shake and vibrate, and thus causing discomfort for pedestrians. Even though we talk about building aerodynamics, in wind engineering, the aim of any skyscraper design is not to make a smooth shape, but one that can break up the wind and prevent these vortices. For this, solutions include rounded or notched facade corners, open slots to let wind pass through, planting trees, and more.

This paper addresses the topic of pedestrian wind comfort, from origin and
definition to wind comfort analysis, criteria, and example case studies; all meant to
form an in-depth understanding of the field.

Download Whitepaper

The outdoor climate includes wind direction, wind speed, radiation, and air pollution; all of these factors can be influenced by the rise of a new building and its interaction with surrounding elements. Depending on these as well as the size, form, height or corner shape of the new structure, high wind speeds can occur. In addition, other phenomena such as passages and the Venturi effect are common problems in wind engineering. To understand the latter phenomenon, refer to this article: What is the Venturi Effect?

New Buildings with Pedestrian Wind Comfort Problems

The Flatiron Building is one famous case of dramatic changes occurring within an urban microclimate caused by a construction project. Since then, laws and regulations have been passed, with many urban authorities requiring pedestrian wind comfort study results for granting building authorizations. Despite the progress made on this subject, the industry still has a long way ahead. There are several cases of recent architectural projects that have caused damaging effects. 

Another prime example, the 20 Fenchurch Street skyscraper in London, known as the ‘Walkie Talkie’ building, has also joined the ranks of infamous buildings to date. The tower has been accused of creating a wind tunnel with extreme gusts and posing a serious danger for pedestrians.

Here at SimScale, we ran a CFD simulation online to investigate how significant were the wind effects. The animation below shows the average velocity at pedestrian head level (1.5m-2m altitude) when wind is considered to blow from a single direction. These simulation results showed higher wind velocities around the corners of some of the buildings. This phenomenon is called the ‘cornering effect’ and can have an even stronger impact when two opposite buildings are subject to it and the street is parallel to the wind direction. In fact, the simulation predicted this effect on the neighboring narrow streets.

The red zones represent the uncomfortable areas for pedestrians, where the wind velocity is 8m/s and above. Due to the fact that the tall ‘Walkie Talkie’ is surrounded by smaller buildings, it redirects the airstream down, creating a downdraft flow that increases the wind velocity at the bottom. Together with the cornering and channeling effects, this phenomenon influences pedestrian wind comfort. 

As this skyscraper has already been built, the solutions that can be taken to improve the comfort of pedestrians and cyclists are limited. If multiple CFD simulations in an iterative design process would have been run, they could have predicted design flaws and prevented the problem it faced after construction. As for corrective solutions, besides their extraordinary benefits in reducing pollution, trees can help mitigate accelerated wind velocity. Their effects can also be tested using engineering simulation, but you can learn more about tree modeling for CFD and porosity values here: How to Model Different Types of Trees with Porous Media.

In 2011 in Leeds, a northern UK city, accelerated wind speeds caused by the 110m-tall Bridgewater Place office and apartment building caused a truck to roll over, killing a pedestrian [3]. This tragedy, along with 25 incidents [4] prompted the reconsideration of construction standards, with London prevailing as the biggest offender.

Authorities were forced to reconsider construction standards and put in place stricter requirements for wind comfort assessments. In fact, in August 2019, the Government has issued wind microclimate guidelines that are to be complied with by architects and civil engineers for developments in the City of London.

With this, the requirement of doing wind studies for all new developments higher than 25m ensures that pedestrian comfort and safety are virtually always being assessed. Additionally, it is important to note that this is the first time that cyclists have specifically been taken into consideration in such an all-encompassing standardization.

From commercial skyscrapers to residential high rises, wind acceleration increases either through narrow channels between these structures or, more concerning for passersby, from being increased towards the ground, through the downdraft effect.

These effects can be predicted in the design testing stage, and then changes can be made to prevent any negative consequences. In fact, within the guidelines, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is recommended for buildings of 25 meters or higher while required for buildings 50 meters or higher. If you are interested to learn more about the subject, SimScale recently released new features that enable compliance with the guidelines.

What Are Pedestrian Wind Comfort Studies?

Pedestrian wind comfort studies take into consideration meteorological data, aerodynamics, and comfort criteria. The data regarding the latter two is provided by wind tunnel testing (physical experiments) and numerical simulation with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software.

Simulation can digitally model the airflow over and around a building or urban area and is a faster and less costly approach than physical experiments, but it is not meant to exclude them. Both techniques are used together in a construction project in order to ensure all required data is provided and adequate testing ensured.

By assessing pedestrian wind comfort with CFD, urban master planners, civil engineers, and architects can predict the behavior of wind flow around buildings early, and benefit from an iterative design process. Wind speeds and other parameters can be calculated at pedestrian levels, and comfort can be evaluated based on given criteria. 

Case Study: Pedestrian Wind Comfort Study for Stockholm Royal Seaport with Cloud-based CFD Simulation

In this project, CFD simulations of the Stockholm Royal Seaport were performed in order to assess pedestrian wind comfort in this urban development project. Even with the geometry’s high complexity, the analysis was done in a web browser, from CAD upload to post-processing, as the platform used is fully cloud-based. This area in the capital of Sweden consists of tall apartment buildings, many exposed to semi-coastal weather conditions. This makes a wind comfort study essential. 

For this case study, an online CFD solution based on the Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) was used to obtain a detailed and accurate prediction of the wind velocity at the pedestrian level, using wind rose data taken from a third-party weather forecast supplier. The tool is provided by SimScale through its integration with Pacefish®. The LBM method has been developed especially for pedestrian wind comfort analysis as opposed to traditional steady-state CFD analysis which is normally used in other applications and industries.

After uploading the CAD model into the simulation platform, selecting the areas of interest, and choosing the analysis type, the wind rose data was imported to input the correct wind inlet profile for each direction.

The user can select the pedestrian zone at a certain height above the terrain. The remaining settings are automated. The platform allows up to 36 wind rose-driven directions to be simultaneously simulated online, but this project only tested 16 to investigate transient wind effects such as gusts, vortex shedding, and cornering effects.

CFD Simulation Results

With the standard wind comfort criteria integrated, such as Lawson, Davenport, and NEN 8100, the tool provided calculation results from all wind directions and analyzed the wind frequencies at certain velocities. Output quantities such as streamlines, cutting planes, isosurfaces, and more could be visualized in both a transient and average state.

For the North-East wind direction, the simulation results show that sometimes, because the rows of apartment blocks are perpendicular to the wind stream, the airflow between the buildings accelerates from 8m/s to about 16m/s.

Investigating multiple wind directions helps predict the worst case scenario and anticipate any problems, early in the design process. Below, the post-processing results show the full picture.

Below, the computation results of all wind directions are combined into a single visualization, where different wind comfort standards—Lawson, Davenport, and NEN 8100—can be considered depending where in the world you are. In this case, the Lawson criteria be evaluated. 

As it can be observed, the zones between the apartment blocks in the center of the region are acceptable only for pedestrians walking fast. In addition, some areas directly exposed to the shore indicate high wind intensity. Hence, in all the regions shown in yellow (or red), residents will experience discomfort standing up or sitting down. If you’d like to learn more about this project, feel free to take a look at this blog article: Sustainable Wind Engineering: The Stockholm Royal Seaport Project. 

Conclusion

Hopefully this article served its purpose of answering the question “What is pedestrian wind comfort?” and why it is so important in building design and urban planning alike. 

Without wind studies, many negative consequences can arise in cities, from discouraging customers from visiting nearby shops to real safety risks to pedestrians and cyclists, even threatening lives in extreme cases. 

Developers and engineers have a responsibility (and often a requirement through standards like the ones discussed above) to address wind impact early in the design process and assess a proposed project’s impact on the surrounding environment.

And if the Flatiron Building’s story piqued your interest, this video by Doug Patt from How to Architect includes simulations that visualize the wind effects around it.

References

1. Treasures of New York City: The Flatiron Building (TV, 2014) WLIW. Accessed: April 3, 2014

2. Sir Phillip Burne-Jones, Dollars and Democracy, page 58, 1904 

3. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-12717762

4. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-21633206

The post What Is Pedestrian Wind Comfort? appeared first on SimScale.

In today’s world, engineering plays a part in almost everything that surrounds us, from the minute you turn on your faucet to brush your teeth in the morning, to driving to work in your car, and all the way to turning out the lights before bedtime; from basic needs such as housing, food, medicine and transportation to entertainment and luxury goods. With innovations continuously being brought to market, engineering is experiencing a steady growth extending to all of its wide-ranging facets. The European mechanical engineering sector, for example, is expected to grow at an average annual rate of 3.8% over the next 10 years [1], while the global engineering services market was valued at about $1,024 billion in 2018 and is expected to grow to $1,515.66 billion at a CAGR of 10.3% through 2022 [2].

Such growth is driven not only by endless possibilities and passion for innovation, but more commonly, competition. With new players challenging the status quo, companies need to stay competitive by using (or developing) the latest technologies, increasing their product’s performance, and improving their development process in order to save time and costs to ultimately be faster to market than their competitors. This affects every level of the product design process from the design engineers to quality assurance teams, all the way to sales, marketing, and the CEOs. 

Together with the overarching discipline, engineering teams have also evolved. In a globalized world, teams are often international and dispersed around the globe across different time zones. Remote work has also become popular [3] and the trend seems to continue to grow. Technology has opened up these possibilities, which bring significant benefits allowing companies to hire the best talent and have access to multicultural, multi-skilled staff. The advantages don’t come without challenges, however, as teams need to find tools, solutions, and processes that keep feedback rounds and teamwork running.

No longer can engineering teams be bound by project silos, time zones, or physical locations to meet demanding deadlines. So how can engineers use this to their advantage?

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Collaboration Challenges for Engineering Teams

Collaboration has been so largely adopted in the way people work, that it is often a point of frustration for employees when it doesn’t exist or is inefficient. In fact, a study published by Salesforce indicates that 86% of respondents cite lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures.

Still, in any industry, the bigger the team, the harder it is for its members to collaborate on projects. When it comes to engineering, the hurdles are even steeper due to the software solutions used, which rarely provide collaboration features. From computer-aided design to computer-aided engineering (CAE) tools, engineers are generally used to working alone on a project, saving the results, and only after these steps, trying to then relay it to their colleagues, leaving room for miscommunication and left out information. 

This is mainly due to how these tools are deployed, as traditionally, engineering solutions have been desktop-based. With limited licenses installed on dedicated computers, not only collaboration is limited but so is accessibility, as the usage requires being present in a particular location. In turn, cloud computing has challenged the status quo, opening up new possibilities. 

This paper addresses the challenges large companies face in having teams collaborate on design or engineering projects and proposes the use of cloud-based software with dedicated team plans to increase productivity and foster cooperation. Its focus is on computer-aided engineering (CAE), which traditionally has had very limited collaboration possibilities until the emergence of the cloud.

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Cloud-based CAE Has the Collaboration Door Wide Open

The cloud has made it possible for entire applications, no matter their complexity, to be developed, installed, and accessed in a standard web browser. With such a level of accessibility, sharing and collaboration capabilities are practically native to this new field.

While the cloud is embraced by many industries, engineering has not been as fast in joining the trend. Despite having been among the first fields to benefit from technology as early as the 1980s, both computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-aided engineering (CAE) are reluctant to catch this particular high-speed train.  

Most of the CAD and CAE software on the market is still traditional and on-premises. Developed over several decades, the most popular tools include a whole host of complex features and are uncontestedly state of the art. They are not known for their accessibility, cost-effectiveness or ease of use, however. And these challenges can limit the technology’s adoption altogether. 

Whereas CAD software is part of any engineer’s toolbox, with or without the cloud, for CAE the situation is quite different. In fact, we estimate that around one out of 20 engineers who could benefit from simulation in their product development process has access to simulation tools. The low numbers are tied to large upfront hardware as well as software investments they imply. 

And while engineering teams might still be torn when it comes to moving to the cloud, renowned as well as new players in the industry have acknowledged that digitalization in engineering is bound to happen. AutoDesk®, Dassault Systèmes®, Siemens®, Onshape, and SimScale are only a few of the CAD and CAE companies that have brought cloud-based solutions and collaboration features to the market.

In fact, SimScale has recently released enhanced collaboration features dedicated to meet the needs of large engineering teams when working on FEA or CFD simulation projects. 

Collaborating on Simulation Projects with SimScale

With the collaboration features available on SimScale, multiple users are able to work simultaneously on the same simulation project from any location, without leaving their web browser. No copies are necessary as all team members have access to the same version (just like Google Docs) and all changes are available within a dashboard. This enables engineering teams to share details, simulation knowledge or feedback quickly, having a true iterative design process and saving time. Such a working model is ideal for global teams as well as remote work setups, as different members can access the same project in real-time. 

A detailed overview of the collaboration features can be found in this article.

How Engineering Companies Use Cloud-Based Simulation

While cloud-based CAE is not yet standard in the engineering team’s software stack, thousands of early adopters are already enjoying the benefits it brings.

This case study, for instance, tells the story of design and consultancy office Thermo-Consult, which was contracted by the University of Pannonia to provide HVACR engineering services for a cleanroom that would host an electron microscope. The goal was to create a multi-operational state ventilation system in the cleanroom with a changeable air flow pattern.

Cloud-based providers Onshape and SimScale were chosen for CAD and CAE respectively. As both tools work in a web browser and have an integration, creating the CAD model in Onshape and transferring it to SimScale with a single click made the workflow very quick. The simulation results confirmed the engineer’s expectations about the main flow characteristics. Using online numerical modelling enabled him to fine-tune the first concept and check the air state and velocity parameters at different flow rates and operational states. 

“During the whole project, the SimScale support team did a great job. The project leader had a daily-based contact with the support team. All the problems were solved in a fast and professional way. We also received comprehensive answers to questions about the advanced settings.” mentioned Gabor Petrika, project leader, and lead designer.

Employing cloud-based simulation in the first stages of testing, Thermo-Consult was able to get started with the tool immediately and test different scenarios in a short amount of time. But the cloud did more than that; whenever the user ran into problems or had questions, the support team was able to assist in real-time. 

Another example is Techtree Engineering Ltd., a consulting engineering company operating in the oil and agricultural industries. With the goal of improving their analysis methods to gain a competitive edge, the Techtree Engineering team turned to SimScale for two main reasons. First, the platform has a minimal upfront investment and no expensive hardware costs. Second, the cloud-based software allowed the team to work remotely, aligning perfectly with their workflow and company model.  

Non-linear analysis was conducted on a part where the load caused a stress concentration to exceed material yield. It was found that the stress was self-limiting and did not cause excessive residual stresses. Based on the simulation results, the team was able to consistently and confidently increase the load rating of their tools, making both them and their clients more competitive.

“Using SimScale allowed us to increase the rated load of several tools by up to 20%. In a competitive market, that gives our clients the edge they need over the competition,”

said Tyler Lindstrand, engineer at Techtree Engineering.

Conclusion

These stories are very few examples of the projects that engineering teams have brought to a new level by using cloud-based solutions. While time and cost savings are often the main reasons for initial adoption, other benefits such as easy signup, worldwide access, and collaboration capabilities through cloud solutions, once discovered, become such an integral part of our workflow that we soon come to ask ourselves: How did we ever live without them?

The post The Evolution of Engineering Teams and How They Stay Competitive appeared first on SimScale.

SimScale’s Mission

If you follow SimScale on social media or are subscribed to our email newsletter, you know already that for the past six years we’ve been working towards making simulation available worldwide through the cloud. Our aim is to help engineers and designers optimize their designs and build the best products, constructions or processes they possibly can. All of us here at SimScale are proud of our mission, and feel lucky to be part of a company that can have such a positive impact.

The scope is wide—SimScale is being used by a dozen industries, on hundreds of applications. From the early adopters—automotive and aerospace—to electronics, HVAC, construction, machinery, and many other verticals, every field can benefit from fluid dynamics, thermal and structural simulations. Since we’ve made the technology available online, more than 150,000 professionals have tried cloud-based computer-aided engineering (CAE), and with this interest, we’ve validated our vision. We are deeply grateful for our customers and try to show it as best we can through our support team, which has become quite popular in our community (at least that’s what our user reviews say).

When Neven Subotic first wrote us an email proposing a collaboration with his organization, we were flattered. Having a strong mission and knowing our product brings a positive outcome in so many applications is one thing, but this was still different. We were about to work on our first non-profit project.

About Neven Subotic Foundation

Neven Subotic is internationally known for his football career, but here at SimScale, we came to know him also for the foundation he built—Neven Subotic Stiftung. Started in 2012 and focused on WASH projects, the foundation’s goal is to improve the life and future of children in the poorest regions of the world, with rural Ethiopia being the focus region.

Through Neven Subotic Foundation‘s projects, children get access to clean water as well as sanitary facilities for improved health. The end goal is to help more children attend school and get their education, without the daily survival and health barriers they otherwise have to deal with.

Sanitation Project with Online Simulation

The first project we worked on together was the optimization of a ventilated improved pit latrine (VIP latrine) for a sanitation project, which has been used as a standard design by many other non-profit organizations since the 60s.

The engineers at SimScale created a new optimized design with the help of simulation and optimized the airflow by 5.75x when compared to the standard design. More flow meant better ventilation, a reduction in odors inside the latrine, and more flies being pushed through the drop hole and up the pipe into the fly screen.

Aiming to take this project one step further and reach an optimized design of the latrine not only in terms of flow but also cost that can become standard in schools from Ethiopia and throughout other African countries, the Neven Subotic Foundation partnered with SimScale again last December to announce a design competition for designers and mechanical engineers worldwide.

The VIP Latrine Optimization Challenge

The goal of this design challenge was to develop a latrine that safely discards waste with adequate ventilation to prevent the spread of diseases. The final, optimized design would also be cost-effective, as the next step is to present it to the local authorities and build the latrines in rural Ethiopia.

We provided a 3D CAD model of the latrine that was easy to edit and modify. Our suggestion was to use cloud-based CAD software (Onshape) and leverage the import function for transferring the design into SimScale and ran the CFD simulation for virtual testing. Once within the SimScale Workbench, the efficiency (air exchange rate) of the latrine needed to be calculated with the help of fluid flow analysis.

The Winner: First Place

After examining our submissions (which came from all corners of the world—Europe, North America, and Asia) and evaluating the projects based on all criteria, we have agreed on a winner: Walied Hassan.

The CAD model of the winning symmetry design

Walied created a great overall design. The inline design was excessively good in the northerly configuration (a known trait of the inline design), the symmetric design was a better one as the ACR was as low as possibly allowable, and the reduction in build material cost correlated to this. Here is his geometry in Onshape and this is the CFD simulation ran with SimScale.

Walied won the $200 Amazon voucher—the prize for the first place in this competition.

Innovation Mention: Second Place

James Linfield was awarded second place, with another very impressive design. This entry oozes innovation: four vents, one on each internal wall is a great solution to airflow optimization.

The innovative features need to be assessed for benefit/cost, where a study should be carried out to identify manufacturing techniques, sources and materials before a proper estimation can be added to the component cost. Since materials are primarily locally sourced, the outcome of the above study would influence the possibility of this design becoming reality.

James won the second prize, a $100 Amazon voucher.

Both of our winners as well as our other participants did an impressive job, and we are very grateful that they joined our challenge.

In the next steps, Neven Subotic Foundation will start the project and build the design in Ethiopian schools across rural regions.

If you’d like to support Neven Subotic Stiftung’s 100% WASH projects in Ethiopia, you can donate. 100% of your donation will be invested in the projects.

To learn more about airflow simulation projects check out our public project page.

The post VIP Latrine Design Challenge with Neven Subotic: Announcing the Winner appeared first on SimScale.

The solution is a brand-new GPU-based solver using the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), which pairs high accuracy with unparalleled speed and is accessible via the cloud with SimScale.

We partnered with Numeric Systems GmbH to develop this innovative feature through their tool Pacefish®, making it possible for SimScale to reduce running times for transient simulations from weeks and days to hours and minutes.

Developed by Numeric Systems GmbH, Pacefish® is a revolutionary implementation of the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) tailored to the massively-parallel architecture of GPUs. Its ability to run on multiple GPUs in parallel enables turnaround times that are 20-30 times shorter than with traditional methods. Moreover, Pacefish® supports several turbulence models such as Smagorinsky, SST-DDES, Hybrid SST-IDDES and k-omega SST making it unique among other LBM solvers.

Wind analysis (results showing velocity) in Gangnam District (South Korea) created end-to-end via a web browser with SimScale and simulated according to the Korean Building Code 2016. Unsteady analysis using a k-omega SST turbulence model and a grid of more than 300 million cells (200s real-time simulated in less than 2h on 8 GPUs).

In its first release, this new solver enables virtual wind tunnel analysis for a variety of applications, including wind loads on buildings, pedestrian wind safety analysis, automotive aerodynamics, and other external flow applications.

Lattice Boltzmann Method Validation of the Solver Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM)

As the accuracy of simulation results is critical, several validation projects have been carried out, comparing the generated simulation results with wind tunnel measurement data. The most important results from these validations will be presented during this free webinar. All you have to do is register.

As an example, this project was created with the purpose of validating the wind pressure on a tall building using the following parameters:

• Static pressure coefficient distribution on the windward, lateral and leeward side of the building
• Static pressure coefficient distribution over the building perimeter at ⅔ of the building height

These parameters were obtained by performing a temporal averaged mean of the values, calculated with a transient incompressible flow analysis.

For validation and comparison purposes, measurements of mean static pressure normalized by the dynamic pressure, with a velocity of 12.7m/s (at the building height), were compared with the data obtained from the numerical and experimental results.

The mean static pressure coefficients, Cp, on the upper windward, sidewall and leeward faces were extracted for the isolated building case at 2/3 of the height of the building. In the end, there was a good agreement between the results of our simulation study with the numerical and experimental results, which can be observed in detail here.

Lattice Boltzmann Method How to Get Access to the New LBM Solver

As with every solver on SimScale, every user can benefit from this innovative technology without specific hardware requirements related to graphics cards, data storage or CPU performance. Relying on cloud computing, users can run industrial-scale external flow analysis with hundreds of millions of cells within just a few hours of computing time on up to 16 GPUs.

Simulation of wind loads on high-rise buildings: LOHAS park in Hong Kong

“The accurate analysis of transient flows has historically been fraught with very long computing times and high up-front costs in order to yield realistic results. With the release of this new Lattice-Boltzmann solver, CFD engineers no longer need to choose between speed and accuracy—and on top of that, can access it with the convenience of an entirely web-based workflow. We’re very excited to see our customers seize the new opportunities this technology is opening up,” said David Heiny, CEO and co-founder of SimScale.

“After years of intense research and development on our GPU-accelerated CFD-solver Pacefish® from scratch, we are proud and happy to offer our unique piece of numerical technology to public usage in cooperation with our cloud simulation partner SimScale. Because of our great partnership, we believe in the disruptive potential of this integration and are looking forward to a very exciting future,” said Eugen Riegel, CEO of Numeric Systems GmbH.

Companies and engineers interested in learning more about SimScale’s new GPU-based solver using the Lattice Boltzmann method can see real-time simulation here, as well as contact our sales team directly here. 

The post SimScale Releases GPU-based Solver Using Lattice Boltzmann Method appeared first on SimScale.

Natural ventilation is the process of supplying and removing air through an indoor space without the use of a fan or another mechanical system. Also called passive ventilation, natural ventilation is driven by wind and stack effects based on temperature and pressure differences, as well as on outdoor wind speeds.

Mainly used for commercial buildings—such as offices, restaurants, sports halls or supermarkets—, natural ventilation can reduce energy costs and environmental impact while maintaining good indoor air quality and ensuring a higher level of comfort for occupants, especially when compared to mechanical air conditioning. Better indoor environmental conditions can have further benefits, such as higher worker productivity or reduced healthcare costs.

These are just some of the reasons why HVAC engineers and architects choose natural ventilation in the building design process. Although this decision can, in many cases, be the right one, it is often based on a few hand calculations and assumptions, without a proper engineering analysis to back it up. The proof of performance can be obtained with engineering simulation software, which is a practical and efficient tool to calculate the expected ventilation rates, the air distribution patterns or the temperature. To these factors, you must add the building’s position, wind exposure or entrance locations—all of which need to be tested.

Natural Ventilation Role of Engineering Simulation in Testing Natural Ventilation

Although it can save weeks of design time and thousands of dollars in costs, engineering simulation—especially CFD and FEA—has been, until recently, expensive to use. This is one of the key reasons why many engineers preferred to rely on hand calculations rather than invest over $40k in hardware and licenses for on-premises software.

In recent years, cloud-based solutions have challenged the status-quo, and SimScale is one of the companies leading the democratization of simulation or computer-aided engineering. SimScale makes very complex simulations easy and accessible via a standard web browser. With a free Community account that has no time limit or strings attached, this platform enables anyone in the world to set up and run simulations in parallel, and then post-process the results completely in the cloud, using only a normal laptop or PC and Internet connection.

Natural Ventilation Webinar Recording

In the webinar below, you can learn how CFD software in the cloud can help you virtually test your designs to develop a proper natural ventilation strategy for buildings, ensure occupant comfort as well as indoor air quality, save energy, and reduce the costs of building design, operation, and maintenance.

Watching it doesn’t require any simulation knowledge. As for the software needed to apply what you learn, SimScale provides free access to the Community account. Because SimScale is a cloud-based tool, the only things you need are a standard computer and Internet connection.

Piqued your interest? Discover the benefits of CFD for the AEC industry yourself by creating a free account on the SimScale platform, no credit card required.

Community Plan Professional Trial

The post Natural Ventilation Validation with CFD Software in the Cloud appeared first on SimScale.

For this, American Wind’s founder Robert Yost used his experience in designing jet engine turbines to develop a blade that used both airfoil technology and jet turbine technology. This allowed American Wind’s turbines to start functioning at a much lower wind speed than any other turbine on the market, which meant the micro wind turbine can create power through a larger range of wind speeds.

Challenge: Testing American Wind’s MicroCube

With the design ready, Robert wanted to investigate the performance of the MicroCube wind turbine in the operational conditions. The verification of the experimental results would be the first step before using the analysis for further development. It was clear that experimental tests provided the most accurate data. At the same time, they give a limited overview of the micro turbine’s performance. With computer-aided engineering, it was possible to visualize all the features of the wind flow at any given point. Having such data provided a significant advantage for optimizing the product’s design.

This free infographic illustrates how architects and engineers can use CFD to virtually test and optimize building designs and HVAC systems. Download it for free.

Download Free Infographic

Solution: Simulating the Micro Wind Turbine with CFD

Using the SimScale cloud-based CAE platform, the engineers at American Wind meshed the MicroCube’s CAD model in a way that resembled the live wind tunnel at which it was tested. A square channel was placed before and after the compact MicroCube. The expected air flow was turbulent, though the range of operational wind speeds indicated that an incompressible model would be sufficient. To incorporate the motion of the fan blades, a multi-reference-frame (MRF) rotation model was used. Although the MRF model simplifies the simulation by “freezing” the rotor, it allows a fast and accurate evaluation of the steady state conditions of the case.

The obtained mesh consisted of over 7 mln volumes. It included local area refinements, surface refinements, and turbulent boundary layer mesh.

During the analysis, it was assumed that the blades were rotating at a fixed speed dependent on the inflow air velocity, based on experimental data. This is a common approach when testing turbines, which allows the investigation of actual wind flow patterns.

The captured data involved all flow field data (pressure, velocity) and extra forces and moments acting on the whole MicroCube, as well as the forces and moments acting on the blades. During post-processing, the difference in flow rotation before and after the micro wind turbine was calculated.

The two main challenges in the analysis were the preparation of the mesh and obtaining reliable, converged solutions. It took several attempts to obtain a mesh that would be accurate enough and at the same time reasonably big to facilitate the calculation. Fortunately, thanks to the semi-automated manual meshing, the creation of mesh variations was not too challenging.

The second main issue was evaluating the results’ accuracy. In most cases, it was impossible to tell if the results were good or not until the simulation finished. On the other hand, SimScale allows the calculation of multiple simulations at the same time, which helped the engineers complete the whole analysis 20 times faster than they would have on a single computing unit.

Simulation Results

In total, 26 operation conditions were analyzed, ranging from extremely low wind speeds up to expected limit conditions.

On average, each simulation required 10h of computation time.

Four of these simulation runs needed to be repeated with modified numerical conditions and extended convergence times to obtain correct results.

Although the residual plots in many cases did not present perfect convergence, this could be attributed to the mesh quality and development of flow features behind the blades.

Extending the simulations would most likely not improve the quality of the data since it was most probably limited by the mesh.

An additional interesting result found during the analysis was the occurrence of a wind recirculation region that was discovered attached to the stator arms of the MicroCube.

Awareness of the presence of this flow feature opens up the possibility of optimization of the shape of the stator (generator mount) in a way that will reduce energy losses due to recirculation.

We hope you enjoyed American Wind’s story of optimizing its micro wind turbine design. You can find the original success story on the SimScale website. If you’d like to learn more about SimScale’s customers, check out our dedicated page.

Discover all the simulation features provided by SimScale. Download the document below.

Download Features Overview

The post Optimizing a Micro Wind Turbine with CFD | American Wind appeared first on SimScale.

In medicine, disposable pumps are used for accurately dispensing medication, such as antibiotics, chemotherapy or pain management therapies. Allowing doctors and nurses to choose the volume and flow rates, they are very important to suit patient’s individual needs of medication for general infusion use. But the medical sector is not the only one using them, as disposable pumps are present in the pharmaceutical, food, beverage, consumer, and industrial sectors as well.

Talking about disposable pump technology cannot be done without mentioning the industry leader—Quantex. The company supplies single-use pumps and also provides design and development services for custom applications. Quantex’s engineers and designers are on hand to provide design expertise throughout the development process and assistance into volume production.

Quantex’s products actually evolved from the biomedical market, where disposable pumps were required for hygienic reasons. Its pumps replaced the old peristaltic pump technology, improving accuracy and ease of drug administration. With significant experience in the medical field and seeing the potential of disposable pumps, Quantex expanded its product base to other industries, such as food processing.

Challenge: Increasing Membrane Thickness while Keeping the Same Mold

Making a new, bigger model posed multiple challenges. Newly designed parts of the pumps included very thin deflective polypropylene membranes.

Producing the membranes at the desired thickness and with very small tolerances created significant difficulties for the manufacturer. Expensive iterative modifications to the molds would have to be applied and the whole production process would have become much longer.

Quantex engineer Jonathan Ford decided to investigate the deflection of the membrane undergoing pressure load depending on variable plastic thickness. The CAD tool used at Quantex already had structural analysis capabilities, but it did not include nonlinear FEA analysis. The extra calculation package was very expensive and this is when Jonathan discovered how cost-effective SimScale is.

Solution: Testing the Disposable Pumps Designs With FEA

The first step in analyzing the new pump design was to extract the geometry of the membrane from the model. A reference, square membrane was tested at this step. Obtaining a good 3D mesh of a geometry that has high aspect ratios is not easy. The user needs to make sure that the mesh is sufficiently fine to capture the actual behavior of the system while keeping the number of nodes as small as possible, to avoid long calculation times. Taking advantage of the geometrical symmetry is always good—in the case of the studied membrane, two symmetry planes could be applied. Still, the first test mesh was first order and had only one element across the thickness of the membrane.

On the other hand, a precise study of the system during the transition phase was not required and the mesh was used regardless. The square-shaped geometry was already studied experimentally. The comparison of final maximum deflection of the simulation and the physical test has shown good agreement. This meant that the coarse mesh could be used to analyze the new design.

Jonathan’s experience with the pumps that used square-shaped membranes pointed out the difficulties with precision manufacturing of the edges. With an increased size of the pump, the problem would be even bigger. A new shape was proposed, where the edges would be rounded, and the whole membrane would look more like an oval. The main variable parameter now was the actual thickness of the membrane. Jonathan wanted to know what would be the deflection difference when he increased the thickness of the part by 50%.

Having the square membrane case done earlier, creating proper meshes for both new variants of the design was easy. The selected calculation type was nonlinear advanced structural analysis. Thanks to the customization features of SimScale, Jonathan was able to utilize the polypropylene as the material used in the actual product. Jonathan mentioned that the SimScale support team was definitely helpful when choosing the proper symmetry boundary conditions to ensure the best stability of the computation.

To deform the membrane, a pressure load was applied to its top surface. At first, the pressure was distributed uniformly across the surface. The selection of such condition on the platform was quick and straightforward. At the same time, it was a bit far from reality, since reference cases have shown that the pressure force is proportional to the deflection of the membrane, decreasing with deflection. Fortunately, SimScale provided the possibility of non-uniform force distribution. Jonathan came up with a smart functional definition of the pressure load, which better mimicked reality.

The final element of the simulation setup was the choice of numerical schemes. Jonathan favored fast calculation, so relative convergence criteria were selected and the default tolerances were loosened up. The geometry was expected to undergo big deformations as the force was ramped up. With strict convergence tolerances, it would create significant trouble with getting a solution in this transition state. The tolerance of the calculation at maximum deflection was much tighter than defined by the convergence criteria which added confidence to the result.

Optimization Results with the Simulation Approach

The simulation runs took around 25 min each. The data was downloaded and analyzed using ParaView and the results were very encouraging.

The decrease of displacement of the membrane when increasing its thickness by 50% was definitely in an acceptable range. Knowing that the manufacturing defects would generally never exceed the tested maximum thickness, the production tolerance limits were increased by 50%. This gave a larger processing window and increased confidence level that the pump was production capable. Furthermore, several expected expensive iterative modifications to the molds and the production process were avoided.

Finally, the calculated deformed shape of the membrane was overlaid on the pump’s geometry. It appeared that additional improvements to the pumping area were now possible, which would result in an increase of devices’ performance.

Overall, the CAE approach to the design optimization allowed Quantex to improve its product, safely investigate a new design, and save money and time. With the new pump being manufactured, further studies are planned for optimization and customization of the product.

Quantex’s original success story can be found on the SimScale website.

If you want to give cloud-based simulation a try, start with a free community account.

SimScale’s CEO David Heiny tests the capabilities of the platform to solve a real-life engineering problem. Fill in the form and watch this free webinar to learn more!

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The post Increasing Manufacturing Tolerance for Disposable Pumps by 50% with FEA appeared first on SimScale.

Robert Boz founded his company eight years ago in Australia, with an initial focus on the optical industry. Today, Meccanica is a joint venture with Marco Engineering, which has 50 years of experience in engineering. This collaboration merges the unique strengths of each entity to provide a unified solution partner with capabilities in engineering design and analysis, multiphysics simulation, testing and validation, and more.

With ongoing projects for the commercial, defense, scientific, and aerospace industries, the joint venture has a philosophy of continuous improvement in research and development, prototyping, product development and high-value manufacturing processes.

No stranger to engineering simulation, Robert noticed the shortcomings of on-premises software and began to look for alternatives. The biggest issue for him was the limitation of computing power. The local workstation becomes basically useless during a simulation run, which can take up to 16 hours per calculation.

CAD and CAE in the Cloud with Onshape and SimScale

In his search for an alternative for simulation, Robert discovered Onshape and quickly adopted it as his preferred CAD design tool. The collaboration between his team and the clients went smoothly, which built his preference for cloud-based solutions.

Because Onshape and SimScale not only have a partnership but also an integration called Connector App, there was only one step from Onshape giving SimScale a try. The Connector App enables users to access and operate the entire design cycle in the cloud, from CAD creation to CFD or FEA simulation.

FEA and CFD Simulations

Meccanica’s expertise and projects are diverse, just like the simulations that the engineers had to perform. The access to all of SimScale’s features was definitely a change from traditional software, which often requires paying for different licenses depending on your needs. The team performed structural analyses and fluid dynamics simulations, and the integration of high-end numerical tools allowed him to move away from hand calculations.

The simulation provided detailed information about the system’s performance while highlighting areas in the design which might need dedicated investigation in order to optimize the whole system.

Stress Analysis of a Vacuum Chamber

An example of analysis that Meccanica worked on using SimScale was the stress analysis of a cryogenic vacuum vessel. The task aimed to present the behavior of the assembly exposed to atmospheric pressure while keeping the inside of the part in a vacuum. Since no significant deformations were expected, the static finite element analysis type was selected. The nonlinearities of the problem were limited to physical contacts. Further modeling improvements were achieved by removing hyperelastic o-ring gaskets.

In order to acquire the best leverage of time and accuracy, the geometry was first tested on a coarse mesh. With this approach, the simulation setup could be tested, and modifications of the settings could be quickly applied. After the coarse mesh produced a reasonable and stable simulation, the geometry was discretized with much more precision. As a result, the obtained results were accurate and reliable.

The results have demonstrated the capability of the platform to tackle complex systems of vacuum vessels. Data analysis has shown the displacements of the top and bottom plates with respect to the casing. Most importantly, they have demonstrated that contacts are engaged in limited areas, which might result in poor closing. A comparison of the results of simulations with and without gaskets have shown that, as assumed, the part had little effect on the precision of simulation.

The performed analysis provided valuable insights into the behavior of the cryogenic vacuum chamber and was a great starting point for further, more detailed investigation.

If you want to give SimScale a try, you can create a free community account.

SimScale’s CEO David Heiny tests the capabilities of the platform to solve a real-life engineering problem. Fill in the form and watch this free webinar to learn more!

Watch Webinar

The post Stress Analysis of a Vacuum Chamber: Meccanica’s FEA Story appeared first on SimScale.