Industry Innovations
Engineering simulation is used across a broad spectrum of industries to speed up the innovation process while minimizing the impacts of new development, particularly cost and time to market. Some industries, first aerospace and then automotive, were early adopters: Today's industry leaders would not even consider designing cars or airplanes without simulation. All industries have now widely adopted virtual prototyping to minimize time, costs and financial risk. As a result, organizations are gaining a distinctive advantage in aggressive efforts to make innovative concepts a reality. Examples also come from the healthcare, construction, food, sports, energy, electronics and chemicals industries.
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Aerospace 
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Since the beginning of the reach for the moon, the aerospace industry has widely deployed engineering simulation across the design process as well as for designing components that go into making airplanes and spacecraft. The cost of physically prototyping airplanes is prohibitive. Therefore, virtual models are used to design the entire airplane (external including aerodynamic studies) as well as the engine, internal HVAC, and avionics landing gear, to name a few.
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| Drag prediction of engine-airframe interference effects |
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Automotive
| Fierce competition among car makers coupled with the risk of failure highlights the need for innovation. These pressures have pushed the automotive industry to adopt technology that allows them to produce new models faster, design and incorporate the latest components, and reduce costs. Development speed has risen dramatically in the last few decades, an improvement that would have been impossible without simulation. The news headlines regularly address auto recalls and component failures; many of these problems can be eliminated in future products through a wider deployment of simulation-driven product development. |
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Visualization was an important tool in DaimlerChrysler's return to NASCAR after 25 years.
Courtesy CEI and EnSight. |
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Construction
| Costs of maintaining comfortable thermal and moisture levels in a building are increasing, and poorly designed construction leads to wastefully high energy usage. Construction companies systematically use simulation to make building design and HVAC decisions that, if planned early enough in the design process, can impact energy use and help meet environmental and safety requirements without increasing costs. Leading organizations around the world have adopted this technology for cost-effective innovation. |
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ANSYS software verifies the design of the innovative retractable roof at Wimbledon by simulating the opening and closing mechanisms.
Courtesy ACA Engineering Consultants. |
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Consumer Products
| Consumer products are typical items for which the margin per product is relatively low, no matter of the quality of the product. Benefits are coming from the mass production of these commonalities combined with significant market share in this very competitive market. Engineering simulation is largely used by best in class consumer product companies to combine cost effective innovation together with significant savings. |
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| Courtesy Dyson Ltd. |
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Electronics & Semiconductors
| Historically, electronic equipment costs have decreased over time, raising expectations that the trend will continue. There are huge market pressures to reduce production costs; similarly, competition dictates faster deployment schedules, and consumers demand more innovations. Leading electronics companies have widely adopt engineering simulation to model system components to improve cooling efficiency, maximize signal integrity and minimize signal interference between devices. |
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| HPC with domain decomposition solved the helix array on a spacecraft with other antennas nearby. |
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Energy & Environment
| Nuclear, renewable and fossil fuel energy companies are fiercely competing with each other to lower the cost of supplying energy while addressing safety and the global concern for the environment. No single energy source offers a complete solution: Renewable energy suffers from high production costs, and fossil fuels and nuclear energy face increasingly tough regulations. Utilities and equipment manufacturers alike are turning to engineering simulation to give them the technological advantage that comes from a better understanding of their equipment and processes. |
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| ANSYS software was used to create device that generates wave energy while moored to an anchor. |
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Healthcare
| No matter whether it is a biomedical device or a pharmaceutical drugs the cost of bringing a new solution to the market is huge and the available to recover this investment before patent expiration or before the latest innovation is matched or outperformed by a competitor's product is short. An increasing number of biomedical and pharmaceutical companies are now using simulation systematically throughout their design and approval process. |
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| Courtesy CADFEM. |
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Industrial Equipment & Rotating Machinery
| Because building physical prototypes of turbines is cost-prohibitive, turbomachinery companies have been quick to adopt engineering simulation. The opportunity to test a large number of variations for a new design without the need for physical prototyping during the preliminary investigation phase has made of this technology a strategic tool for the industrial equipment industry. |
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| Streamlines shown in cross section though pump impeller, diffuser and HPB housing |
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