“Seen Is Solution” a CAD/CAE integrated parallel reanalysis design system

• CAD and FE models are unified by a subdivision surface and ES-FEM.
• The improved reanalysis methods are used for rapid computation.
• A Multi-GPU parallel platform was developed for large scale problems.
• Geometrically related optimization problems can be solved easily by the SIS system.

In this study, a CAD/CAE integrated reanalysis design system composed of 4 layers, i.e., triangle patch-based CAD modeling module, triangle element simulation solver, reanalysis faster solver and multi-GPU parallel platform, is developed. The CAD/CAE integrated system concept is typically applied during closed loop design procedures (e.g., adaptive optimization and topological optimization). However, most engineers freely adjust the design aiming to obtain corresponding analytical results synchronously. Based on this concept, the defining characteristic of the developed system is its “Seen Is Solution” approach, and it is thus coined the SIS system. As is the case for other CAD/CAE integrated systems (e.g., IsoGeometric Analysis (IGA)), the designer is only required to build a CAD model, define constraints and adjust designs. Corresponding results must be shown to designers online. The basis of the developed system involves the integration of Edge Smooth Finite Element Methods (ES-FEM) and reanalysis. To improve the efficiency of the design procedure, the system is also parallelized based on a multi-GPU computational platform. The developed system has been applied to vehicular design and has been found to shorten the design cycle significantly. Moreover, the SIS system can be integrated with popular closed loop optimization methods.