Finite Element Simulations Integrated in Design Automated Procedures

Numerical simulations can play a meaningful role in many industrial contexts, but a capillary diffusion of simulation tools is often limited by the high level of competence necessary for a profitable use, required resources and time expense to reach significant results. To improve dissemination a possible solution is to automate simulation activities and integrate them in an automated or semi-automated process. This paper discusses the issues related to this proposal by presenting two case studies and highlighting most important aspects. The first case is a typical engineering product application and concerns the integration of simulation in an automatic design process of industrial fans. The second one is related to a non-industrial process; in fact, it regards medical device and precisely lower limb prosthesis. Following issues will be discussed: importance of a CAD model as an input of the process, migration from CAD to CAE model; effects of parameters variations on the models, model characterization, simulation steps and results evaluation. It becomes clear the need to consider aspects that are typical of KBE (Knowledge Based Engineering) to formalize and represent rules and procedures to automate the design process and, in particular, simulation tasks.