Digital product design and engineering analysis techniques

This chapter introduces the digital product design and engineering analysis techniques for realizing rapid product development. In the product design process, design, modeling, performance validation, and redesign form an iterative design cycle. 3D form creation using computer-aided design (CAD) is fundamental for generating digital product models, where the geometric representations of products are constructed and manipulated via different modeling techniques. A case study of an architectural design system is presented to illustrate the property of the representations and modeling approaches. Besides geometric information, nongeometric information, such as design intent and associativity, is important for further engineering analysis and design optimization. Intent-based systemic design aims at modeling large and complex systems in a collaborative environment with efficient information flow throughout the entire systemic design cycle. After generating a digital product design model, engineering analysis, such as finite element analysis (FEA), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and multibody dynamics (MBD), is important for product performance validation through digital simulation. This chapter also presents a case study of car body design, CFD simulation, and shape optimization for a detailed demonstration of parametric product modeling, product performance validation, and design optimization. It ends with a review on the current challenges and expected future work for CAD and computer-aided engineering (CAE) systems.