INTEGRATING ENGINEERING DESIGN AND ANALYSIS USING A MULTI-REPRESENTATION APPROACH

With the present gap between CAD and CAE, designers are often hindered in their efforts to explore design alternatives and ensure product ro bustness. This paper describes the multi-representation architecture ( MRA) - a design-analysis integration strategy that views CAD-CAE integ ration as an information-intensive mapping between design models and a nalysis models. The MRA divides this mapping into subproblems using fo ur information representations: solution method models (SMMs), analysi s building blocks (ABBs), product models (PMs), and product model-base d analysis models (PBAMs). A key distinction is the explicit represent ation of design-analysis associativity as PM-ABB idealization linkages that are contained in PBAMs. The MRA achieves flexibility by supporti ng different solution tools and design tools, and by accommodating ana lysis models of diverse discipline, complexity and solution method. Ob ject and constraint graph techniques provide modularity and rich seman tics. Priority has been given to the class of problems termed routine analysis - the regular use of established analysis models in product d esign. Representative solder joint fatigue case studies demonstrate th at the MRA enables highly automated routine analysis for mixed formula -based and finite element-based models. Accordingly, one can employ th e MRA and associated methodology to create specialized CAE tools that utilize both design information and general purpose solution tools.