dr antony robotham - executive director ewg-dss ......dr a robotham ewg-dss liverpool 2012 virtual...

Dr Antony Robotham - Executive Director

EWG-DSS Liverpool 2012 12 - 13 April 2012

Dr A Robotham

EWG-DSS Liverpool 2012

THE VALUE OF SIMULATION AND IMMERSIVE VIRTUAL

REALITY ENVIRONMENTS TO DESIGN DECISION MAKING

IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

DR A J ROBOTHAM & DR F SHAO

Dr A Robotham


Content

Virtual Engineering Centre

Virtual Engineering

Virtual Engineering Across the Product Lifecycle – Examples

Scenarios and Case Study with Bentley Motors

Conclusions

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VIRTUAL ENGINEERING CENTRE

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Located in North West region of UK

Largest manufacturing region in the UK by GVA

Manufacturing generates 20% of the region’s GVA

Employs 400,000 people in the region


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A Centre of Excellence in Virtual Engineering…

VE best practice demonstration

VE business development and research

VE education and skills development

… providing VE support to the aerospace supply chain

and other high valued added manufacturing sectors

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VEC Project Partners

Project Partners

University of Liverpool

STFC Daresbury Laboratory

NWAA

Morson Projects

BAE Systems

Airbus (Associate)

Funding

NWDA

ERDF

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VE Technology Specialists


Applied Computing & Engineering Ltd

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VEC Technical Facilities

LAN to HPC &

Internet

CAE Workgroup

VR Workgroup VESL

Workgroup

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Virtual Reality Workgroup

LAN 100 Mbps

CATIA V6 Server DELL PowerEdge

License Server DELL T7800 64-bit DS Virtools PTC Division

Optical Tracking System 12 x Vicon Bonita Infrared Cameras 100 Mbps Ethernet connection Vicon “Tracker” software VRPN communication protocol

“Virtual Touch” System Haption Virtuose Haptic Device 6 x Degrees of Freedom Force feedback VRPN communication protocol

Head Mounted Display NVIS nVisor SX111 HMD NVIDIA Quadro 4800 Graphics 2 x 1280 x 1024 eye displays 102o Horizontal Field of View Passive Stereo - 50o Binocular HFOV Magnetic/Infrared Tracking

Computer Network 3 x DELL T5500 64-bit 1 x DELL T3500 32-bit 100 Mbps Ethernet connection Various software applications

HP

C Lin

k

10 Gbps via Fibre Optic

Stereo Projection System NVIDIA Quadro 5800 Graphics 2 x WUXGA Active Stereo projectors 6.0m x 2.1m screen 3390 x 1200 resolution single image 3.6 million pixels in total

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Virtual Reality at the VEC

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CAE Workflow

Virtual Product Design CATIA V6 Solid /Surface Geometry Feature Modelling Parametric

Virtual Production - Assembly DELMIA / HAPTION RTI

Virtual Reality - Immersion 3DVIA Virtools PTC Division 3DXML

Virtual Engineering - CFD ANSYS Fluent

Prep Stage

Solve Stage

Post Stage

Virtual Engineering - FEA SIMULIA

Prep Stage

Solve Stage

Post Stage

IGES STEP

Geometry Prep SpaceClaim Direct Modelling Parametric

HPC

Virtual Documents 3DVIA Composer / Player

Optimisation ModelCenter

ENOVIA PLM

Optimisation iSight

OPTIS Physics based rendering

WITNESS Discrete Event Simulation

NASTRAN FEA Modelling ADAMS MBD Modelling

SolidWorks CAD

OPENFOAM Open Source CFD Pointwise Meshing tool

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VIRTUAL ENGINEERING

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Virtual Engineering

Integration of product and process

modelling using digital technologies

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Virtual Prototypes

A product model in a synthetic environment

VIRTUAL PROTOTYPE

TS = Technical System

Hu = Human System

En = Active Environment

Transformational Process

En Hu

TS

State 0 State 1

Theory of Technical Systems: V Hubka

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Virtual Prototypes

VIRTUAL PROTOTYPE

TS = Synthetic Helicopter

Hu = Pilot in Flight Deck

En = Synthetic Ship & Air Wake

Air to Ship Landing

En Hu

TS

Flying Landed

A product model in a synthetic environment

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VE across the Product Lifecycle

VE enables integration across the product life cycle …

… but requires 1000s of scenarios to be modelled using VPs

VIRTUAL

ENGINEERING

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VPs across the Product Lifecycle

High fidelity VPs support early decision making in NPD

VIRTUAL

PROTOTYPES

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VPs in support of NPD

VPs are an effective support to the

iterative activities of the Fuzzy

Front End of NPD …

… and the systematic development of

holistic, integrated solutions

Opportunity

Identification

De

ma

nd

Pu

ll

Overall Problem

Overall Solution

Sub Problem

Sub Solution

DE

CO

MP

OS

ITIO

N

SY

NT

HE

SIS

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VE EXAMPLES

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Requirements Capture: VOC

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Concept Definition: Flight Behaviour

Geometry Structural Model

Aerodynamic Model

cw

lt ct

et

ew

MAC

CoG

Sweep

Y

X

Y

X

wi

ywi

fi

xfi t1

b/2

X

b/10

bt/2

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Design: Functional Development

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Manufacture: Process Simulation

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Assembly: Ergonomic Assessment

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Development: Ride Qualities

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Development: Optimisation

Size of Design Space = 2 Size of Design Space = 3

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Test & Certification: UAV Mission

Hub

Platform

Environment CFCS

Product Model

Visualisation

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Operations: Flight Handling Qualities

En u

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Operations: Planning & Training

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Upgrades: Improved Performance

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Disposal: Nuclear Decommissioning

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SCENARIOS

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Product Quality

The totality of product quality is achieved only when

all life cycle phases have been considered

all stakeholders are delighted

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Scenarios

A concrete description of activity that the user

engages in when performing a specific task

A description sufficiently detailed so that design

implications can be inferred and reasoned about

Scenarios are not formal; they are not

scientific in any fancy sense

Carroll, JM (1995)

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Scenarios

Multiple scenarios allow us to

explore different visions of the future

“cover the field” as much as possible

a creative tool that facilitates

the leap from observation to invention

Verplank, W et al (1993)

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Scenarios in Virtual Engineering

Customers demand more sophisticated,

higher quality products

Engineering simulations can provide:

insight into the behaviour of virtual products

a comprehensive coverage of the solution space

data and information to make design decisions

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Scenarios in Virtual Engineering

However, engineering simulations only represent a

small set of product properties and are limited

bound by the fidelity of the underlying physics

Therefore, hundreds of different simulation models

may be required to represent all the scenarios

identified in the product life cycle

Additionally, each scenario requires accurate

representations of the product, the active

environment, and the human operator

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Scenarios in Immersive Virtual Reality

Immersive Virtual Reality enables:

interaction with the virtual product in real-time

exploration of many different aspects of a scenario

assessment of user stimuli on the functionality

However, to achieve real-time interaction often

requires engineering simulations to be simplified

and limited to tasks that can computed quickly

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Case Study with Bentley Motors

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Immersive Virtual Reality

Working with Bentley Motors is was apparent that

immersive virtual reality provides:

a collaborative environment for the design team;

an information resource shared by all;

a means of communication;

a means for visualising life cycle events;

awareness of stakeholder needs during design;

a stimulus for creativity and synthesis;

a means to monitor the progress of design work; and

a means to support quality assurance in design.

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CONCLUSIONS

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Concluding Remarks

Virtual Prototypes have an important role to play in NPD

Hi-fidelity physics-based models are required

of the product and the active environment

Exploration of the total design space will be expensive...

...so it requires efficient software & effective hardware

Virtual scenarios demand management

Dr A Robotham


Thank You