I-Corps: New Approach for Virtual Prototyping and Computer-Aided Engineering

I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是重大的，因为预期将对改善许多工业部门的产品质量和安全产生影响。该项目将导致更多地依赖虚拟原型，而减少对昂贵和耗时的实际原型和实验测试的依赖。先进的虚拟样机将产生更可信的事故调查报告和安全和操作指南，并且可以轻松地进行创新设计配置的实验，并显着降低许多工程领域的维护成本，包括运输。对单一软件技术的依赖将消除现有计算机辅助工程（CAE）系统的不兼容性，改善通信，并产生更健康的工作环境。这个I-Corps项目旨在解决由于使用多种计算机辅助工程（CAE）软件系统而导致的严重不兼容问题，这些软件系统使用了完全不同的方法开发。这个项目的主要目标是通过使用一个新的基于机制的CAE框架来解决这个问题，以消除不兼容性，并允许开发具有前所未有的精度和细节水平的模型。为此，将使用有限元（FE）绝对节点坐标公式（ANCF）来无缝集成计算机辅助设计（CAD）和分析过程，通过使用一种方法创建统一的几何/有限元分析网格并执行多体系统（MBS）动态仿真。ANCF有限元可以用来定义在正交坐标变换下不变的几何。除了准确地描述几何形状和有效地执行分析之外，ANCF元素还为动态运动方程提供了最佳的稀疏矩阵结构，从而导致新的计算程序的发展，这将彻底改变设计过程并消除使用多软件系统的需要。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will be significant because of the anticipated effect on improving product quality and safety for a large number of industry sectors. The project will lead to more reliance on virtual prototyping and less reliance on the costly and time consuming actual prototyping and experimental testing. Advanced virtual prototyping will result in more credible accident investigation reports and safety and operation guidelines, and will allow experimenting easily with innovative design configurations and for significant reduction in maintenance cost in many engineering areas, including transportation. Reliance on a single-software technology will eliminate the incompatibilities of existing computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems, improve communications, and produce a healthier work environment.This I-Corps project aims at addressing serious incompatibility issues attributed to the use of multiple computer-aided engineering (CAE) software systems developed using fundamentally different approaches. It is the main goal of this project to address this problem by using a new mechanics-based CAE framework in order to eliminate the incompatibilities and allow for developing models with unprecedented levels of accuracy and details. To this end, the finite element (FE) absolute nodal coordinate formulation (ANCF) will be used to seamlessly integrate the computer-aided design (CAD) and analysis processes by using one approach to create a unified geometry/FE analysis mesh and perform the multibody system (MBS) dynamic simulations. ANCF finite elements can be used to define a geometry that is invariant under an orthogonal coordinate transformation. In addition to describing the geometry accurately and performing the analysis efficiently, ANCF elements lead to an optimum sparse matrix structure for the dynamic equations of motion, leading to the development of new computational procedures that will drastically change the design process and eliminate the need for using multiple-software system.