A digital prototype enables early verification of its functionality and performance, as expensive or even impossible real-world tests can be performed in virtual spaces.
The ultimate goal of virtual product development is to create an accurate digital representation of a system and its components and parts, creating a digital prototype of a product that reflects reality in all its design, material and functional details.
Its future performance under application-specific loads can then be calculated as realistically as possible using numerical simulations.
But the approach does not stop here, as the manufacturing process of the different components and parts of a product can likewise be simulated, so that production-related geometric imperfections, process-related residual stresses or material inhomogeneities and anisotropies can also be realistically reproduced.
A digital prototype enables early verification of its functionality and performance, as expensive or even impossible real-world tests can be performed in virtual spaces.
Simulations help to disentangle complex dependencies and reduce them to a few relevant key components and processes, ultimately reducing the need for physical prototypes.
Digital prototypes enable straightforward changes to the design, materials and boundary conditions, as well as rapid iterative optimization steps, reducing the scope and effort of engineering changes and engendering a right-first-time attitude.
Other aspects include the prediction of possible failure modes and modifications to reduce failure tendency, anticipating possible processing problems and resolving them during the design of the parts and molds.
Digital prototyping combined with simulation significantly reduces time-to-market, lowers development costs, improves manufacturing process efficiency, increases product quality and enables efficient collaboration throughout the supply chain.
Material knowledge is key
At the onset of a simulation and depending on the application, different aspects of material behavior need to be considered such as static or dynamic material characteristics, temperature-dependence, fluid resistance and swelling, dynamic behavior, wearing, fatigue and fracture behavior.
To make all this information flow into a simulation, the appropriate test methods for the decisive material properties need to be selected. Materials need to be tested with the highest accuracy to ensure optimal data quality.
The use of simulations is not limited to problems of product functionality and performance, also the manufacturing processes of the products can be simulated. As far as rubber processing is concerned, for molding process simulations the properties of uncured elastomeric materials, such as viscosity, heat capacity and thermal conductivity, but also the kinetics of the chemical crosslinking reaction (vulcanization) need to be known.
To achieve this, suitable lab experiments and models that allow for the transfer of results of basic material tests under simple load cases to the behavior under realistic load cases in the application need to be developed. The biggest challenges for simulation continue to be fatigue behavior and product life prediction in a broad range of applications. For this reason, there is an increasing need for multi-physics simulations combining different physical phenomena and interactions, simulation of embedded electronics, such as sensors, and tribological topics like fluid films acting at the interface between seals and moving counter parts.
As the industry moves toward full automation, these approaches are becoming increasingly important, allowing for more accurate, faster and more customized development of new products than ever before.
