- CAE or Computer: Aided Engineering is a term used to describe the procedure of the
entire product engineering process, from design and virtual testing with sophisticated
analytical algorithms to the planning of manufacturing.
- Computer-aided engineering is standard in almost any industry that uses some sort of
design software to develop products.
- CAE retrieves description and geometry from a CAD database
- It is used in almost every industry such as manufacturing, aerospace, automobile,
defence etc.
- CAE depends on CAD
- CAE is an engineering analysis performed at the computer terminal using a CAD
system.
Advantages:
- It increases production efficiency and quality through better designs.
- Executives and managers heavily rely on CAE analysis.
- Tool for decision making - what the product is going to look like, its performance
characteristics.
- What improvements need to be made?
- Provide the customers with a concept before building expensive prototypes and preproduction units.
- Products tested for any possible conditions you can think of.
- Optimization of the concept.
- Conceptual design through analysis.
- Final results of analysis help to reduce future costs.
- Great savings in time and money.
- Ensures achievement of customer satisfaction.
In general, there are three phases in any computer aided engineering task:
1. Pre-processing: Defining the geometry model, the physical model and the boundary
conditions.
2. Computing: Usually performed on high powered computers (HPC).
3. Post-processing (of Results): Using scientific visualization tools & techniques.
The cycle is iterated, often many times, either manually or with the use of automation
techniques or using optimization software.
CAE is applied in these 4 main types of analysis
- Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
- Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
- Boundary Element Analysis (BEA/Acoustics)
- Kinematic/Dynamic Analysis