5 Traps to Avoid When Using Simulation for Product

Development
When implemented correctly, simulation can bring many benefits to your product development.
However, you need the right processes or you can wind up reducing the value or providing a false
sense of security. Here are the top five traps to avoid.
1. Failure to Understand the Physics
One common danger is failing to understand the underlying physics of your application. Software
cannot do all the thinking for you - if you don't understand the fundamentals then disaster awaits.
The allure to play around with phenomena you don't fully comprehend is tempting. I have a vivid
recollection of an engineering team that believed that they had conceived a revolutionary flow
accelerator that would radically change how we capture wind energy. Unfortunately, they were using
an incompressible fluid assumption in their CFD code to model supersonic flow. Let's just say that
breaking the news to them was . uncomfortable.
2. Going in Blind
Another snare is that some people expect simulation to provide predictive results of complex
phenomena without experimental benchmarking or material testing. While simulation can provide
valuable information about general trends, detailed experimentation is still key to achieve its true
potential as a predictive tool.

Figure 1: Benefits of Simulating Early and Often
Product development teams have to make the initial investment in time and energy to carefully verify
and validate the simulation method for each unique process to which it will be applied.
3. Waiting to Simulate
Perhaps the biggest mistake is to wait until the design is complete before simulating. If simulation is
only performed late in the design cycle then it is almost not worth doing. Instead of accelerating the
process, it actually delays the design process. You may as well take your chances with a prototype test
and hope for the best. This is the main reason you hear the common cry: "I don't have time to
simulate!"
On the other hand, simulating throughout the entire design process maximizes the benefits at the
conceptual stage. This will drive innovation, provide guidance, allow for quick vetting of concepts, and
help to avoid a late stage blind side. If performed properly, the final analysis becomes merely a
confirmation. This strategy helps compress as well as define the entire process.
4. Failing to Plan
Don't forget to allocate enough time and resources for simulation when planning out the development
schedule. While serving to ultimately compress the design cycle, it should come as no surprise that
simulation requires manpower. Unless this allocation is prepared at the outset of the project you will
likely never touch the software.
If design and simulation are performed by different groups then it is also important to collaborate
closely. Teams need to adhere to timelines drawn up during the planning stages. In this way, it will be
less likely that simulation will be abandoned if schedules begin to slip.
5. Assuming You Know Everything
One final trap to be aware of is failing to incorporate uncertainties as part of the simulation process.
The real world is uncertain; nothing is manufactured with all dimensions being "nominal." The
analysis of one geometric configuration, using one set of loads, material properties, and boundary
conditions barely scratches the surface.

Figure 2: Assessing the effect of geometry changes
on component life
To perform simulation in this manner is very limiting. In the best case, you risk over-design because
you need to be overly conservative. In the worst case, you experience an unacceptable rate of in-
service failures.
Simulation is critical for analyzing multiple variants of a design.
With the right design process, software tools and hardware option, it is relatively easy to analyze
multiple variations of the same design. Doing so will help you gain true insight into the effects of
uncertainties. Failure to do this will put you at a competitive disadvantage.
Avoiding these five common traps will go a long way to ensuring your organization will perform
simulations effectively and achieve all the benefits that it has to offer.










How SolidWorks Simulation Helps Simulation at Design

No one is going to tell you thatSolidWorks Simulation is a simulation powerhouse; it
isnt trying to be. The key to the softwares success isnt eye popping feats like
multiphysics, high cell counts, adjunct solvers, or fancy meshing tools seen
in COMSOL, STAR-CCM+, ANSYS, and Simulia. SolidWorks Simulation instead brings
the power of simulation into a CAD environment and therefore the initial design stages.
This offers simple, cheap, quick methods for designers and design engineers to make
more informed early decisions producing an overall more optimized product. After all,
sometimes its David that really beats Goliath.
Simulation Early in Design
When analysis started hitting the mainstream in the 80s, it was something done at the end of the
process, said SolidWorks Simulation expert Glenn Whyte, a Simulation Product Manager at Hawk
Ridge Systems. You build the plane at Boeing and just before your flight you run an analysis that was
pass or fail. Pass you are good to go; fail you move right back to the start again.
Simulation at the start of the design process, however, means that you are able to test every decision
along the development cycle. Design engineers are no longer over engineering a piece to ensure it
passes the analysts muster. Instead through quick guess and check, they are optimizing the material,
manufacturing process, cost, and even environmental impact by performing simple simulations.
What the Program Can Do

Depiction of Simulation Programs complexity and target users as described by Glenn Whyte.
We look in the industry and see differences in expertise requirements from designers, to design
engineers, to full time simulation engineers and pure analysts. We see SolidWorks as a design to
engineering tool. One of the main advantages of it is that it is integrated into CAD during the design
workflow. This will shorten the learning curve. We explain to our customers that have never done
analysis before that they can analyze 4-5 different scenarios in an hour. Just by manipulating the CAD,
processing the analysis, and keeping track of what those changes mean physically. Simulations are
also completely integrated with the CAD model, if you make a design change then it is ready to analyze
without intermediate steps like file exporting. It will also use the existing mesh settings to re-mesh the
model, said Whyte.

Chart automatically keeps track of the optimization after every simulation.
He wasnt exaggerating. During a live demo two engineers in training, with little experience in
SolidWorks Simulation, were able to run about a dozen simulations each in an optimization challenge.
Having applied their knowledge of the CAD environment they were able to optimize the safety factor
of a camera mount by limiting the mass of the mounting panel. Meanwhile, a chart kept track of
results of each simulation run.
Whyte said that SolidWorks Simulation goes into some fair depth like non-linear dynamic analysis
and it has a very capable CFD tool. We can draw different stratification for CFD and see how things
will stack up differently. But when you go into highly non-linear, multiphysics, and highly dynamic
problems we get close to the limit of our solvers abilities. This is when you pick up ABAQUS, LS-
Dyna, or Marc
He has a fair point. It doesnt make sense to run a simple problem in more complicated simulation
programs. Setting up the program, exporting the files and fixing the geometry can take hours before
you even run the simulation. In SolidWorks it will take no more than 5 minutes. Additionally,
subsequent simulation set up is as simple as altering the CAD model.
There is a productivity boost, said Whyte. If you are doing an analysis that fits in the assumptions
made by the linear static stress analysis, which is 80% of the analysis done out there today, tools like
the analysis capabilities we have in SolidWorks Premium are the most productive way to get a result,
and our Simulation Professional and Simulation Premium packages can then take you a little further.
No Frills Means Easy to Use
Our developers have made a conscious decision to utilize easy to mesh
element types and algorithms. We have five different mesh elements we can
use but most solid body analysis is done with tetrahedrons. They get good
results in most situations and they are very easy to write meshing
algorithms for We also retain control with adaptive meshing techniques
where the mesh will change dependent on the stress gradients, said Whyte.
Additionally, tools like linked multiphysics can certainly ensure that the
final designs are completely optimized for final users. However, setting up
such an analysis can take time and skills of a full simulation analyst.
Eliminating these tools may hurt the ability to completely optimize the problem but they are necessary
to ensure designers and design engineers can use simulation properly. Besides, these frills fulfill a
task much farther down the development cycle than initial design. At the initial design stages
performing separate quick and easy physics simulations can be useful to limit the final designs
destined for analysts to a short list saving time and money.
Make sure you buy the Right Thing!
As seen in the chart below, perhaps the most confusing thing about the SolidWorks packages is the
naming convention. Though Dassault Systemes top design tool SolidWorks Premium does include
simulation, it is the basic version which only includes linear static simulations in assemblies and time
based motion simulations.
However, this package can be extended with additional analysis types available in SolidWorks
Simulation Professional and SolidWorks Simulation Premium, like fatigue, frequency, nonlinear and
dynamic analysis.
Product Matrix. Be careful with the odd naming conventions.
Analysis
SolidWorks
Premium
SolidWorks
Simulation
Professional
SolidWorks
Simulation
Premium
SolidWorks Flow
Simulation
Static Stress X X X

Time-Based
Kinematics
X X X

Event-Based
Kinematics

X X

Optimization

X X

Thermal

X X

Sub Modeling

X X

Fatigue

X X

Frequency (simple
vibration)

X X

Buckling

X


Pressure Vessel

X X

Drop Test

X X

Composite
Materials

X

Nonlinear

X

Random Vibration

X

Dynamic

X

Rotating
Machinery

X
Heat Transfer &
Cooling

X
Flow (Internal &
External)

X
There are three other simulation technologies, explains Whyte. Flow Simulation is a CFD tool used
for fluid flow and heat transfer. It has some extensions for electronics, and the HVAC industry. We
also have a simple first pass life cycle assessment tool to determine the environmental impact of the
materials and manufacturing choices. Finally, we have a plastic injection molding tool to detect
potential injection molding defects Generally we dont like to bundle things. Typically you want to
be able to buy what you want.
However, Whyte was quick to note that the other benefit is cost: though only a sales team can give
you a final quote, you can get SolidWorks Simulation at a fraction of the cost of other simulation
tools. This means companies can reduce the licenses of other costly heavy lifting simulation tools,
which are far too advanced for designers anyway, and limiting those licenses to analysts and
simulation engineers. This can ensure designers are able to perform simple simulations on a lower
budget.
Conclusion
Again, SolidWorks Simulation isnt the tool for complicated high level simulations. But that weakness
has been turned into a strength. This barebones simulation tool will ensure that your designers and
design engineers will pass on fewer partly optimized designs to analysts and simulation engineers.