Model solutions

The most basic issues governing what is possible in computer aided engineering (CAE) are the continued improvement in software technology and the increase in hardware capacity, which allows the simulation of many more complex real-world problems.

The key words here are 'real' and 'world'. For a long time, finite element analysis (FEA) technology used complex structural equations to approximate structural interactions that we couldn't solve any other way. This severely limited us regarding hardware, and because the capacity wasn't there, it also held back our software technology ambitions.

Now hardware is less of an issue. Machines can never be fast enough, but modern hardware has allowed us to develop much more ambitious and 'real-world' software solutions. And even quite complex analyses can be performed at the very early stages of design — where most of the development money is committed.

The whole field of multiphysics has opened up thanks to today's hardware. Multiphysics in an FEA software context refers to the simultaneous combination of multiple physical CAE models from different disciplines — such as fluids, structures, thermal and even chemical domains — to predict device behaviour or whole system response rather than discrete component behaviour.