I spent a month last year in the underdeveloped country of Namibia. Residents were proud to tell me that Namibia is the only country in the world that has a constitution that embraces environmental sustainability.To Namibians, it was a recognition that protection of theirs materials resources was critical to their future. Since I’ve returned to the US, however, it’s become clear that the concept of sustainability, and specifically, sustainable design, will soon become important to us as well.
One specific issue I want to focus on is use of renewable resources as a feedstock for polymers. The immediate reason isn’t really environmental, at least for design engineers. Unstable oil supplies triggered massive runups in plastics prices two years ago. Today it makes sense to study the potential of corn-based polymers for mechanical design projects. Sound crazy? At the giant plastics fair in Germany this fall (K 2007), DuPont plans to present technical data on new grades of Sorona and Hytrel that are corn based. Stay tuned.
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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