Online Simulation of Fluids in Early Design

Shorter product life cycles as well as growing range of product varieties are shifting the product development in the focus. Furthermore, risks of new developments can be reduced by evaluating different solutions. An effective instrument for the validation of different concepts and designs is simulation. Nowadays, there is a huge drawback in the area of fluid simulations. Tools used in the area of Computations Fluid Dynamics (CFD) have two disadvantages: on the one hand it takes a lot of effort to prepare the simulation; on the other hand, the computational execution of simulation takes a long time. Thus, fluids are mainly simulated in special cases like aerodynamics, not in special cases like filling processes because of not being economical. We present a new approach for simulating fluids in the early phases of the product development process based on existing Lagrangian methods. In addition a new method for a fast generation and modification of simulation models is described. We evaluate the new method for online simulation in an example showing a design process with a real-time simulation of the design, which is updated online. Thus, the design of products is supported by the What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get approach, helping to reduce the effort put into different concepts.