Virtual manufacturing

The virtual prototyping & manufacturing approach is largely accepted as a common tool for process and product design to shorten development time, investigate the effects on final solutions caused by not perfectly controllable factors, reduce time to market costs and improve reliability of the design.

The context

In the latest decades, many software packets have been commercialised by the most important software houses, widening in this way the fields of virtual manufacturing’s current use in industry, to better approach structural, static, dynamic, nonlinear, impact, ballistic, CFD, infusion and curing analysis.

In accordance with these general needs, technology is currently growing in the following four different directions:

• The development of multi-scale approaches in continuous mechanics, to asses several phenomena like damage
• The identification of robust approaches to the analysis of the micro-structural evolution of materials
• The development of more reliable constitutive equations for materials, allowing a more precise description of the material behaviour in different load conditions and for different plastic deformations
• The realisation and validation of methodological approaches that are able to connect different kinds of analyses, thus having a cumulative effect on the final results (for example material manufacturing, forming and crash or fatigue performances).

Deliverables

Numerical modelling and finite element simulation of physical phenomena represent key elements among our activities.

These are devoted to both analysis and optimisation of in-service performance of components, sub-assemblies and complete structures, and the optimisation of traditional or innovative manufacturing processes and technologies. The final goal is often the identification of tailored technologies enabling the correct use of materials.

We have also gained experience in the development of parametric models for the cost assessment of various technological domains based on MIT developed methodologies.

Focus on labs & facilities

Our laboratory for computational modelling and analysis is based on a cluster of powerful workstations.

Three servers are used for massive elaboration, which implies the availability of 36 high performance processors featured with parallel software.

Advanced and relevant available commercial software tools for modelling and analysis are installed in the elaboration centre and used for specific applications in such technological fields as automotive, mechanics, aerospace, construction and metallurgy.