CAE is revolutionizing product design of things ranging from the humble toothbrush to planes and automobiles and right up to the technologically sophisticated Marslander satellite. Rajneesh Shinde, director-marketing, Altair demystifies CAE in an interview with Tabrez Khan
How does CAE help enterprises? What is the application?
Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) is a term that came into being some 30-40 years ago. In any product development ranging from the technically sophisticated planes and cars to the very mundane toothbrush, there is a design phase and a validation phase, where physical prototypes are built and tested in real conditions. This costs a lot of time and money. In the automobiles sector for example hundreds of cars have to be built as prototypes and subjected to a number of tests on various parameters. CAE enables you to build 3d models and do testing as if in real world conditions. This facilitates reduction in physical prototypes required, thus saving a lot of cost and time required for testing with physical prototypes. Also, the range of tests that can be done with CAE tools increases.
Are the terms CAE and PLM interchangeable? What is the correlation?
The entire space where CAE tools are employed is termed Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The PLM process is basically aimed at maintaining information about the product right from the concept stage to the execution stage. CAE is the design phase or the engineering validation phase of PLM. This phase includes deciding the design of the product as well as taking decisions on what kind of material should be used, what should be its thickness etc.
How does one ensure accuracy in simulated testing?
A detailed correlation is established between the outcome of experiment involving a physical prototype and results of simulated testing. For example, the impact of a car crashing at 100 mph in real conditions is assessed and then projections are made on that basis for various speeds, kinds of impact etc. Once this correlation is established, simulated testing becomes easier and accurate.
What kind of value addition is CAE able to bring?
A step in the PLM process that a lot of our customers do is optimize design of the product, like making adjustments to make the product safer. The process is called value engineering. It facilitates adjustments in design to make the product safer, decrease material density thus lowering costs. To provide a real example, in the case of Airbus A380 the concept of this carrier was to fly long distances with minimum stops. But these carriers were very heavy initially; they needed to be lighter for easy take-off and fuel-efficiency. Airbus used our solution called Optistruct which enabled them to optimize the structural design of the carrier and eventually reduce a whopping 500 kgs of weight from the carrier. There are other instances of such value engineering. In consumer products for example, detergent bottles have to be stacked on top of each other during transportation and even in display at retail shops. So even a 5 gram reduction in the weight of each bottle can have a huge impact on the logistics of these products. Using our CAE products, P&G and Unilever have been able to achieve such restructuring of their products. Another interesting ongoing application of our CAE is in the Marslander project, which plans to send a payload to Mars. For that they have to test the satellite equipment in mars-like conditions. Building a prototype for it is not possible, so simulated testing and statistical analysis are being employed which is enabling the design of the satellite to factor in the likely conditions on Mars.
What are the computing trends in the CAE space?
Computing is the backbone of Computer-aided Engineering. A 16 CPU machine needs to run for a day s time to give you results for a crash impact. So multiple cores are being used these days to speed up the process. High Performance Computing is also being used for CAE. CRL in Pune provides a lot of cores on rent which can be used for CAE purposes. However the use of computing power on pay-per-use basis is slow on uptake because there is a lot of IP stuff involved and companies are wary about risking their IP. However, there are robust agreements and safeguards available, so adoption should eventually grow.
What is unique about your CAE offering?
The licensing for our product is unique. We are different from traditional licencing models in the sense that in the former for every module there is a licence so it becomes very expensive. Our model on the other hand lets you open multiple modules on a single terminal, yet it is deemed as a single licence being used. We have also added a number of partners globally, who have products that complement ours. Its not possible to have expertise in everything in the CAE space, but we are able to provide products complementary to CAE such as CFD due to our alliances with niche companies. And this really is a game changer for us.
