12th AIAA ATIO/14th AIAA/ISSMO MAO Conference 2012

Authors: Santosh Tiwari, Shrinivas Lankalapalli and Juan P. Leiva
Publication Date: September 17-19, 2012
Abstract:

In this paper, the design process integration and automation using the VisualDOC software is presented and demonstrated using example case studies. This paper primarily focuses on the process integration capabilities of VisualDOC and the benefits it offers for design automation. It is shown how the presented software enables a designer or an engineer to perform various design studies efficiently without having to write a computer program. This paper presents a conceptual description of the design of VisualDOC that facilitates complex process integration. Two case studies are presented. In the first case study, the design of a curved shell is described. Simultaneous shape and topology optimization is performed to obtain the final optimal design. This case study shows how VisualDOC can accomplish optimization tasks which are normally very cumbersome to perform and automate. VisualDOC also allows for integrating different design modules together at algorithm-level. This capability not only facilitates complex process integration but also exploits the synergy between different design modules to achieve higher performance. To demonstrate the effectiveness of algorithm-level process integration and the improvement in performance, a case study on reliability-based design optimization of vehicle-side-impact problem is presented. In this case study, it is demonstrated that tight integration between the Optimization and Probabilistic Analysis modules helps in reducing the number of exact analysis that need to be performed to find the optimum solution with desired reliability. The novel integration techniques discussed in this paper and the presented case studies showcase the effectiveness and ease of design process integration with VisualDOC. Contact VR&D to obtain a copy of this paper.