Consider specialty compounds to take advantage of growing interest in molded liquid silicone rubber. Advantages of silicone rubbers include flexibility, thermal stability over a broad temperature range, resistance to solvents, and excellent biocompatibility. Silicones are increasingly being selected by design engineers for valve seats or hoses in autos and aircraft, where their resistance to solvents can be boosted through incorporation of fluorosilicones. Polyurethane is added to improve tear strength for some medical applications. New developments in specialty compounding were reviewed by Mary Krenceski, a research scientist at Extreme Molding in Watervliet, NY at Molding 2008.
A new process for laser-welding large-scale, steel-aluminum foam sandwich structures for lightweighting ships, which eliminates intermetallic phase, has been demonstrated.
A major advance in repairing composite structures combining robots and lasers bodes well for commercial aircraft such as the Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A350XWB, which contain composites in large proportions of their structures.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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