Integration of engineering analysis information in the product development process

Abstract: Keen competition in modern industry motivates companies to produce better products in shorter lead-time. In addition low cost is another key factor that leads commercial success of a product. In the last decade, rapid development and implementation of computer technologies have had great impact on the product development process. In the engineering area, the widely-used advanced computer-based tools enable engineers to design, analyze, simulate and test products by means of digital prototyping in the early phase of the product development process, and therefore dramatically help companies to produce better products with lower cost in shorter time. In practice, design of a complicate product is a complex work where several computer programs from different domains need to be involved. These programs normally need to combine, exchange, and share relevant product data to each other. For instance, Finite Element Analysis and Computational Fluid Dynamics may use geometrical data from a solid model and loads from a Multibody System to perform structural analysis and fluid analysis. The integration of engineering information becomes a more and more important issue in the product development process. However it is difficult to perfectly realize it due to some of the characteristics of engineering information: Heterogeneity. Programs use their own formats (domain specific or application specific) to store information and run on different operating systems and hardware. Distribution. With the development of computer network technology, a trend of engineering information systems has evolved from central systems towards distributed systems. Both data and computer programs are distributed and dynamic. This thesis deals with integration of engineering analysis information in the product development process. The research question is formulated as: How to integrate, share and exchange engineering analysis information in the product development process? The aim is to improve the ability and efficiency of integrating engineering analysis information by using modern database technology as well as other relevant technologies. A prototyping system consisting of a Mechanical Computer Aided Engineering (MCAE) system and an active mediating Database Management System (DBMS) is built. In this system the DBMS is embedded within the MCAE system, meaning that engineering applications not only gain general database capabilities such as storage management, uniform data model, query language and query processing, but also the possibility of combining data from different representations and data sources. In addition, this work presents an active database approach to enable exchange of engineering information among distributed team members in a timely manner. The distributed information is automatically synchronized between different places using database ECA rule and mediation. Only the changes are distributed to other places, which minimise the information transfer and enhance the performance. Members working at different locations can therefore interactively manipulate the same set of information at the same time.