A Virtual Engineering Tool for Product Design Using High Fidelity CFD Analysis Models

Abstract

Product design optimization is a complex decision-making process requiring intensive interactions between designers and the designed product. However, most current optimization tools do not support this type of direct interaction. Typically, resolving a converged result with an optimization tool takes a long solution time and high computing cost. However, designers are not involved in the optimization process and cannot control the quality of the so-called optimal result. In this paper, we introduce a virtual engineering design tool that expands the application scope of virtual reality from visualization to interaction and decision support. This design tool allows designers to easily experiment with different product designs using high fidelity CFD solver and observe the effects in an almost real-time manner. This can help designers understand the nature of the product and make superior decisions. Most importantly, the design tool enables designers to control the optimization computing process by selecting superior starting points or changing an obviously unpromising search direction. Hence, by adding human creativity and experience into the optimization process, designers can resolve the design optimization problem more efficiently. A coal pipe design and optimization scenario is presented to demonstrate the efficacy of this virtual engineering design tool. The goal of this tool is to enable a designer to modify the size and shape of a coal pipe to obtain evenly distributed coal at the outlet. In this tool after the initial population was chosen, a standard evolutionary algorithm was used to find the most superior pipe design within a much shorter time.

Interactive Design Using CFD and Virtual Engineering

“…The second method has been discussed in [7]. The third method works in an obvious way, but interestingly enough, is often ignored by researchers.…”

“…Because the flow field inside a thermal system is usually highly three-dimensional and extremely complex, three-dimensional Navier-Stokes computations are essential, making design optimization based on three-dimensional Navier-Stokes computationally expensive. By introducing users into the design loop and implementing the new fast calculation algorithm [7,9] in the design system, this design tool will significantly reduce the time required by the traditional design method. Also, attention should be paid to the accuracy of numerical methods and verification of the models.…”