Product designers are often faced with difficult design questions. Will my new product fail in the field? Will it bend? Will it fatigue? Will it overheat? Is the magnetic force enough? Is there adequate air or fluid flow? What is the backpressure? What is the lead-time for prototypes and physical testing? Is the prototype budget large enough? Can we cut development time and beat competitors to market? Engineers and product designers continue to lose sleep over questions like these.

Now, with the advent of powerful 3D CAE (Computer aided Engineering) software, it is feasible to “prototype” new products rapidly on the computer. These “virtual” prototypes can be used to predict product performance (and failure) early in the product development cycle when design changes are swift and inexpensive.

CAE simulations can be performed using commercial 3D finite element analysis (FEA) software. FEA Software (such as ANSYS, www.ansys.com) can import existing CAD geometry and can incorporate “multi-physics” effects and interactions between one or more of the following:

- Structural (stress, strain, deflection)

- Thermal (peak temperatures, thermal gradients, heat flow)

- Fluid Flow (pressures, flow rates, wall forces, stream lines)

- Magnetic (magnetic force, flux, magnetization, charged particle trajectories)

- Electric Field (voltage potential, current, heating, particle trajectories)

FEA simulations can be performed on micron-scale devices (like IC chips and MEMs) as well as very large man-made (or even natural) structures such as cranes, bridges, buildings, dams, ships, mine shafts and tunnels, rock foundations, etc…. In addition, manufacturing equipment and many manufacturing processes can also be simulated and optimized.

FEA software also facilitates sensitivity and design optimization studies (iterative processes) so that shapes and/or materials are incrementally varied and automatically exploited for maximum benefit. Since many, if not all (eventual goal), physical prototypes are shaved from the product development schedule, products can be brought to market faster and at lower cost! Uncertainty and risk are also reduced.

Of course it takes education, skill, and experience to properly leverage FEA software to obtain meaningful and reliable results. Investments in training, implementation, result validation, and on-going mentoring are warranted in order to individualize an optimum design-analysis process and fully understand the effects of assumptions, simplifications, and numerical limitations.

For mid-to-large companies having analysis intensive products, the investment to properly implement, customize, and maintain an in-house FEA capability is easily justified as productivity rapidly ramps up and more optimized products are produced at lower costs.

Small and mid-sized companies with less frequent FEA needs may discover they can cost-effectively outsource FEA projects to consultants while reducing overhead and overall project costs. In fact, consultants often work in parallel with in-house development staff, thus reducing bottlenecks experienced when in-house engineers stop designing to do analysis work.

Those who dabble with FEA quickly realize that it is deceptively easy to generate “pretty” contour plots, while it is decidedly more challenging to generate “correct” and useful data. In any case, the benefits of enlisting experts often outweigh the costs.