An Automated Optimization Process for a CAE Driven Product Development

Abstract

Within the product development the need for generating design variants is given in many situations, for example to optimize an existing initial design with respect to new or modified requirements. For an efficient process it is essential that these variations can be done very easily within a small timeframe. In the virtual product development the physical characteristic of a component is determined by numerical simulation. Commercial software products exist for nearly each physical phenomenon. Often these methods are covered under CAE. A fundamental issue for building and analyzing variants easily and fast is a seamless interaction between the CAD and CAE software tools. This paper presents a powerful CAD/CAE sequence to the engineer’s community, where in contrast to other approaches results of the CAE analysis directly interact with CAD data. This strategy is supported by describing the product’s geometry by parameters. The CAD/CAE sequence is integrated in an optimization loop. The presented application example is an automotive part.